


To the Hands

by trainthief



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pre-mimic arc, Slow Burn, Trans Duck Newton, a little bit of everything for your money, and also some fluff, background aubrey/dani, feel like I shouldn't even have to specify that because of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-03-17 01:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 77,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18955612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainthief/pseuds/trainthief
Summary: Hundreds of years before Duck Newton even had the chance to be born, Indrid Cold decided to reject fate and its ideas about his soulmate. And there's nothing that will change his mind. Almost certainly nothing. At least, possibly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the fact that this is being written post-Ep 27, it takes place a bit before and then a bit after Ep 19. That's what Alternate Universes are for!

The rain fell the way it always did in Kepler, West Virginia- which is to say: backwards. Or half backwards, really. It wasn’t the sort of thing any sane human being would be able to notice, but as it happened there was a not insignificant portion of the population that wasn’t human, and another that certainly wouldn’t be considered sane. The odd rain also wasn’t the sort of thing you could comment on to the one barista in the only cafe in town while you waited for your tea to steep, at least not without feeling the need to tip her twice just to make up for how nonsensical you’d come off. But it was the sort of thing Mama knew about and chose to ignore, throwing it onto a mental pile of non-threatening oddities and curiosities that she assumed she’d have time to get to the bottom of when she was dead. A few of the other lodge residents had noticed it as well, and the scientists of the area might have had they adjusted their craned necks and focused their attention to the world around them instead of on the one above. As it was, it was only common knowledge to the uncommon. 

Indrid, for this reason, sat silently at the small breakfast nook of his Winnebago and watched droplets of rain roll up the window. He estimated it was only one in every thirty-two that seemed to get confused about their destination and escape back to the heavens where it was safe. The specific ratio appeared to change based on any number of factors, including air pressure, humidity, and sometimes even his mood. He’d given it quite a bit of attention lately, because there were so very many other things he wanted to avoid. His visions were, as he’d taken to describing them since the late 50’s, often like stacks of televisions playing out in front of him with thousands of possibilities to focus on. But sometimes they weren’t, sometimes they instead hit him over the head with the clarity and brute force of a shovel - an analogy that felt familiar somehow, he’d have to keep an eye out for that one. Sometimes they were like panic attacks, tearing their way out from inside him and giving him no choice but to surrender. And sometimes instead they were his companions in an eternal foot race. He always knew they were there, just a step behind, but if he stayed ahead he’d never have to see them. 

Lately, though, one of his competitors in this million-mile dash had been nipping at his heels - one of the subjects he’d been running from the longest. Almost his whole life, in fact. It was his soulmate. As much as he’d tried to outrun this topic in particular, there had been a few times when the visions had gotten the better of him. A few hundreds of years ago when he’d been younger and more hopeful about the concept he’d taken a peek at the idea, but back then it was such a far off and fuzzy future, so distorted by variables and chance, that he could hardly get a sense of who he was looking for at all. Just that there was someone out there, someone just for him, and they were warm. He had - at the time - considered the idea a blessing. Not all the residents of Sylvain got that opportunity, and although the idea that he wouldn’t meet him for quite some time (him, he knew it was a him) was both unusual and disheartening, it gave him a sense he had never previously had before. It was the feeling of having washed ashore on an unknown island, where the people were kind more often than not and communication took work but was possible. And then, out of the blue and years into his stay, in the middle of a busy market… he heard someone speaking his language. 

This was all in the ancient past, however. He had gotten to know himself better, had gotten to know the world he was born into and the world he lived in now with a much deeper familiarity. He had seen great and terrible things that had almost happened, and even worse ones that actually had, and through decades and even centuries of cultural change and passing fads and social movements that never quite did enough, the only things that had ever stayed the same were as followed:  
1\. He could trust no one but himself, because  
2\. He was not a candidate for unconditional love 

He had at least had the good luck to realize these two points earlier on in his life, and as a result had intentionally muted the channels through which his revelations about his other half had previously come to him. Occasionally something took him by surprise, there was no helping that. A few dozen years ago he’d been attempting to buy a toy store out of a particular Captain Kirk action figure he knew for a near fact would multiply its value by 100 within the next decade, when out of nowhere he was struck with a vision of such force he’d grabbed the long-haired hippie at the checkout counter like a madman as he began to cry tears he wouldn’t even notice until he returned to the harsh cold of the parking lot. He knew then that his soulmate had been born. What had taken the man so long, he had no idea, and he made a point of not finding out. Beyond that, and a handful of quickly-aborted visions that had caught him off guard, he knew next to nothing about the one person in all the worlds that he was supposed to be fated for. Which was exactly how he liked it. Wasn’t that what love really meant anyway? He wanted what was best for this guy, and what was best certainly wouldn’t put him anywhere near Indrid. 

The topic had refused to leave him alone lately, though. This often happened when something was about to become particularly relevant, and the thought filled him with no small amount of dread - a true feat for someone who had by necessity become all but numb to the feeling. He looked away from the window, finally, and realized he’d been doodling blindly as he often did while lost in thought. The lack of attention to his activity was noticeable in the shaky lines and the offset position of the drawing near the corner of his paper. But the subject matter was unmistakable. There was his own hand, clearly in moth form, straining to reach down and only just brushing the finger of a sturdier and more square hand below it. As if he were trying desperately to save someone and was coming up short. 

He didn’t just crumple this drawing, he tore it right in half. 

*****

Duck Newton was not a morning person. In fact, in the morning he thought he barely qualified as a person at all. It’s not that he was grouchy, per se, and actually the first few hours of the day - when the whole world was waking up and even the sun seemed like it was still deciding if it wanted to be there - had always felt magical to him. But God help anyone who tried to make him talk before 9 o’clock, because the most strung-together sentence they’d get out of him would be something along the lines of “Uuurgh, fuck”. 

Luckily, Kepler being a small town and all, just about everyone knew that about him. So as he trudged his way into the same diner he ate breakfast at every morning and discarded his coat - which had somehow not managed to block a significant amount of rain from getting on his work shirt - he enjoyed the small constant comfort that no one there would try to make him chat. Pigeon waved enthusiastically from a corner booth where she and her girlfriend seemed to be splitting the biggest stack of pancakes Duck had ever seen, and Sharon the waitress smiled as she filled the coffee cup at the table where he always sat and told him his usual order would be out in five minutes. But at no point did anyone expect him to give more of a response than a warm smile. Thank Christ. 

Now, were this any other day in the last few decades, he would have finished his routine in silence. Paid the check, left a proper tip like his mom had taught him, and probably been handed something warm from the pastry case with a wink from Sharon on his way out the door. But unfortunately enough, everything seemed to have gone batshit weird in his life lately, and even the sacred ritual of a decent quiet breakfast was no longer safe. It was for that reason that he could hardly bring himself to be surprised when Aubrey and Ned seemed to appear from nowhere, and slid their way into his booth as if they had all been planning on a nice outing together and Duck had just happened to show up first. 

“Hiya, Duck!” 

“Hey buddy.” 

“Uuurgghh, fuck.” 

The two seemed unphased by his response, as if it had been exactly what they were expecting, and set about ordering from a surprised looking Sharon. Duck had been coming here every day for nearly 15 years, and at no point had he brought another person into the equation - much less two. Hell, he didn’t even change his order, french toast and all the fixings had always treated him just fine. But - as if they didn’t notice the fact that they were breaking a tradition - Aubrey ordered a sample of just about everything on the menu, and Ned got a club sandwich with a number of substitutions that would’ve brought a weaker waitress to her knees, and with that Duck let go of the last thread of hope he’d maintained that his friends would let him finish his morning routine in peace. 

It turned out to be for the best. Aubrey and Ned were able to maintain a constant chatter, until after a few false starts Duck managed to get his brain into conversation mode. By the time his plate was reduced to a puddle of syrup and some leftover hashbrowns the trio were laughing uproariously as Ned described a recent close encounter at the lodge, after he and Barclay had enjoyed a few too many drinks and Barclay’s bracelet had come dangerously close to slipping off right as Agent Stern decided to visit the kitchen for some hot cocoa. And then, out of nowhere, Aubrey went still. 

“Duck… You never told me you had a tattoo.” 

She was gesturing to his wrist, where his stupid soulmark was sitting there plain as day. Shit, he’d forgotten his watch again. 

“I don’t,” Duck replied, “I mean - I do, but - it was…… “ he took a deep breath, “a birthday present. From. My grandma…. No, she hated tattoos, I shouldn’t say that about her. SHIT.” 

Aubrey and Ned watched with matching grins, waiting for him to wear himself out. Damn them. 

“Well,” said Aubrey, “that was fun, but are you going to tell us the truth this time?” 

Ned chimed in. “Ooh, is it something embarrassing? Did you get drunk and have them do the name of the old 3rd grade teacher you had a crush on? Because I’ve been there, buddy.” 

 

“Jeezus Louiseus Ned, of course it’s not that. What kind of life are you living, anyway? It’s…” Duck sighed, “I mean, I guess if I can tell anyone it’s probably you two weirdos. I’ve had it since I was born, the doctors thought it must’ve been the weirdest birthmark they’d ever seen or something, and I was always kind of embarrassed about that. But then when Minerva started showing up she explained it to me. Apparently it’s called a soulmark. We don’t really have them on earth, but they happen on her planet and a couple others. It means I’ve got a soulmate out there somewhere.” 

He rolled back his sleeve now, to give them a better look at the mark that had been on his arm so long he’d almost learned to ignore it. It was a pair of eyes, small and incredibly well detailed, taking up so little space on his wrist that his watch usually covered them completely. He’d always thought they seemed a bit joyful, the kind of look you give someone you really liked when you knew they were about to say something real hilarious. 

“Minerva says that’s a common way they’ll appear. As a defining characteristic of the person, the sort of thing you’re not going to miss when you meet them. Makes it easier to find them I guess, fat lot of good it’s ever done me. There’s not a lot of people who pass through Kepler, and I’ve pretty much stopped getting my hopes up about it if I’m honest with you.” 

It was only now that he looked away from the soulmark he hadn’t given much consideration to in a while to study his friends’ reactions. Ned was giving him the face he’d expected, a combination of confused and intrigued. But Aubrey… She seemed dumbfounded. After a moment of silence her dropped jaw turned instead into a wide grin, and she pulled down one side of her trademark jacket to show where her shoulder met her neck, and the little tattoo of a lock of delicately braided hair that seemed to be positioned there. 

“Duck,” she said, “I think I’ve got one of those too.”

******* 

It had been nearly a month since the visions of Indrid’s soulmate had threatened to overtake him, and though many things had changed, they’d hardly improved. Initially, he had begun to pay attention to the mysterious shifts in the future that had seemed to spring up out of nowhere for the sole reason that they provided a much greater distraction from the thoughts that were chasing him than counting raindrops ever could. He saw the unfortunate crash of Danimal’s truck only minutes before it happened, but the moment it did a particular future became quite clear to him. In 73% of the possible outcomes - an impressive number in his line of business - one of the man’s coworkers would personally attempt to investigate the situation, often with two odd friends in tow, and sometimes with three. Even stranger, as far as Indrid could tell, in none of the futures was this coworker given any sort of direct order to do so from either the US Parks Service or the Pine Guard, without first taking the initiative to bring it up himself. Seemingly only because he cared. 

The idea stuck with Indrid, and followed him around the small layout of his Winnie for the day that followed as he attempted to go about his usual routine. He ate his hot pockets, scribbled his drawings, and watched the weather channel the way most people watch Jeopardy - calling out the answers before they were given and chuckling quietly when the forecasters got them wrong - all while trying to stop himself from getting his hopes up. Because the sort of people who understood their bravery as a character trait, or as a virtue… they were a dime a dozen. A kind act done for the sake of being seen doing it was still a kind act, sure, but there was always a line for those people. A point at which they stopped, out of self interest. And for that reason Indrid found them difficult to trust. 

But truly heroic people, as this Duck Newton had hinted at being, they were oh so rare. He doubted that in all his centuries of living he’d ever met more than he could count on his fingers, likely with a whole hand left over. But it seemed that the more he slipped and allowed his curiosity to get the better of him, the more he began to think he might’ve found someone special this time. Duck appeared to be a very consistent person in his futures - an oddity in itself, and a relief for Indrid to watch. Unless he was held up by a serious incident at his home, he always left for work five minutes early, as that was when Mrs. Pearson would arrive home from her morning walk, and he liked to hold the door for her. Whenever he found himself near a piece of litter he always without fail picked it up, often scrunching up his eyes and nose if it was something truly disgusting, but doing it just the same. He seemed well-liked among the people that knew him, but it was apparent that no one really looked beyond his frequent jokes and his endearing tendency toward grumpiness and actually paid attention to his actions. Nobody except Indrid. 

By the time evening rolled around, Indrid had become truly and thoroughly convinced that maybe, maybe, it was just possible that this Duck Newton might be trustworthy. That sliver of belief was the only thing that made him break the hard rule he’d set himself, and for the first time in years try to stop a disaster. 

The moment he saw the Pizza Hut sign sway, he dialed a pay phone he knew would be near Duck and his odd assortment of friends. And when the girl named Aubrey answered his call he instead asked for Duck specifically. She seemed nice enough, no question. But he was only willing to trust one person at a time. 

“Go for Duck” a solid and pleasant voice had said in his ear, and for a moment his heart stopped. He’d heard the voice over and over during the day, sure, but this time it was in the present, and it was talking to him. 

“Hello Duck,” he said, and he then forgot what the call had been about entirely. Had it really been so long since he’d spoken to someone? But he found the thread of his thoughts before long, and a good thing too. “In three minutes, your friend Leo Tarkesian is going to die. He will be crushed to death, as will the two customers currently shopping in his store… You might want to do something about that.” 

And with that, he slammed his ancient landline down on its cradle, and began to panic. 

There were reasons he’d stopped trying to warn the people of Earth of any impending doom. Very good reasons. The amount of pain it caused, to him and to others, was in itself hardly worth it. Especially given that the success rate of those who did try to intervene was so astronomically small. 

What if he had killed Duck Newton, with just one phone call? Duck Newton, already one of the most interesting things to have happened to him in a decade, and - he now realized - such a sufficient distraction that for the whole day he’d forgotten to forget about his soulmate entirely. 

What if he never even got the chance to meet him? 

The thought was so unexpectedly distressing he had downed half a carton of eggnog before he allowed himself to peek at the future he’d created. And what he found brought him the rare feeling of true surprise. 

There was Ned, hospitalized but with an 87% chance of a quick recovery. There was Aubrey, having a difficult conversation with Mama that could go in all sorts of directions. And there was Duck, bruised up and annoyed but perfectly ok. 

He released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Subverting the whims of fate was no small task, and expecting it to happen more than once would be foolish of him. It certainly wasn’t as if his actions hadn’t had consequences, in fact it was now almost a guarantee that those three were going to arrive on his doorstep by mid-afternoon tomorrow, breaking the self-imposed solitude that was so important to him. But lives had been saved, and this Duck Newton had survived. And if he was now given no other choice than to meet the man and his two friends - as he’d only just been panicking he’d never get the chance to - it was going to be on his own terms. 

These three people… the first ones in his recent and distant memories who had chosen to help absolutely unquestioningly… Their success gave him the slightest feeling of relief, as if the coming tragedy had been another rock in his satchel that he’d already become accustomed to carrying, only to have it removed by a trio of relative strangers. 

He resolved to call them. 

 

****** 

Duck had thrown very few punches in his life, and he felt safe in saying he regretted all of them. The first one he’d ever dealt was to a boy back in 2nd grade recess, who had snidely called out from the pitcher’s mound that everybody had better move to the infield cause a girl was up to bat. A combination of the unidentifiable rage at being referred to as a girl - an idea he wasn’t even consciously aware he didn’t like yet - coupled with the injustice of being made fun of for it gave him his first taste of supernatural strength, and on his third swing he knocked the ball right out sight and down to the lower field where nobody under the fourth grade would ever dare venture. But instead of running the bases and receiving his accolades, Duck had walked straight up to the pitcher and socked him one in the jaw. The amount of blood and tears that had caused had made him feel a little guilty, but the point he’d lost his team when he stormed off to the classroom immediately after was perhaps the bigger disappointment. 

After that there had been a few others. He had once jokingly punched Juno in the arm soon after receiving his powers, and unaware of his newfound strength he’d given her a pretty ridiculous bruise. She still made fun of him for that. He’d also once punched a hunter in a bar after listening to the guy go on with his buddies for almost three drinks worth of time about the unlicensed kills he’d made that day. That one was hard to regret, although the warning he’d been given by Sheriff Zeke had certainly helped. 

But easily the most guilty he’d ever felt about a punch was after he punched Indrid. 

Despite his general oddity, and the strange first impression he’d made on the group, Duck had found himself kind of liking the guy. He seemed - under all the unaffectedness of his demeanor - as if he was earnestly trying to help people, but was so overwhelmed by the concept he’d forgotten how it was done. Duck could relate. In fact, somehow, a lot of the man’s weirder quirks felt familiar even. As if after years of straining to make himself understood, this guy sometimes just got it without ever being told. Perhaps it was his ability to see the future, maybe he already knew what explanations Duck might have to make and didn’t even need to hear them. And it seemed like Indrid might have taken a liking to the three of them too. He had seemed so calm about his kidnapping when Duck had spotted him in the woods, kind of like after only knowing them a short while he already trusted Aubrey and Ned and Duck to save him. Or maybe it had just been the most likely possibility. 

Anyhow, Duck had sort of hoped that Indrid would understand his rushed decision to remove his glasses as quickly as possible, given the prophesying and whatnot, but for just a split second after the hit - in the short moment before he’d transformed - Indrid’s eyes had looked shocked and hurt, two expressions Duck had never seen him wear. And there had been something else there, too. Something about it that was familiar to him, but the rush of battle and his urgency to get Indrid out of harm’s way as quickly as possible hadn’t left him much time to examine that. And now, after the fight was over, he was left with only a vague sense that he was missing something, and a pair of bright red glasses. 

He had kept that last fact all to himself, as even though Indrid had given Aubrey and Ned his spares, Duck knew that the game of getting the actual pair might distract them from the fact that the poor guy needed them to fucking see. And to transform back, possibly. He still wasn’t sure how Sylvans dealt with that whole aspect of their lives, but it seemed pretty possible Indrid didn’t have a backup trinket, and if that were the case he’d need the glasses back pronto. 

It was for that reason, and no other, that he found himself driving his ranger Bronco out to the Eastwood Campground at around 11:30 at night. The high beams on the car swept through the darkened forest with a level of illumination that made the whole scene feel unnatural and eery, and not for the first time Duck reflected on the fact that a different version of himself in a different world would be a little bit scared of the supernatural right now. As it was, there was no point in worrying about seeing Bigfoot when he knew damn well the guy was at home cooking up a mean midnight snack in those ridiculous slippers of his. 

Maybe it was only that misguided wistfulness for disaster then, that single moment of lachesism, that made him see what he saw. But for just a second he could’ve sworn that in the corner of his eye, just off to the right, there was something he would’ve recognized anywhere: the reflective eyes of a large animal. Only the animal itself was nowhere to be found among the endless trees. 

He shook his hands forcefully to rid some of the nervousness he’d caused himself, and instead turned on the CD player to the mixtape he and Juno had made together almost ten years ago - back when they’d been Junior Rangers, and therefore forced to share a car. Poor Paul Simon didn’t even get the chance to finish telling him that peace like a river ran through the city, before the red racing stripe of Indrid’s mobile home cut into his line of sight, and he breathed a small sigh of relief. Some part of him he hadn’t even recognized had been a bit worried the man would have flown the coop - no pun intended, given his current mothiness - before Duck even had a chance to apologize. 

He snagged the glasses from where he’d carefully set them on the dashboard, and immediately stepped into a puddle of a size that would be night-ruining, were he not wearing his waterproof boots. And though he was still yards away from the camper, he got the sense somehow that Indrid was laughing at him. 

“Yeah yeah, real fuckin funny.” He called out, “I’ve got your glasses, would you like to come get them? Or I guess you could try asking politely and I could maybe-”

His suspicions were correct, as it turned out, and the door of the Winnebago cracked open just a sliver so that Indrid could cut him off in an amused tone. “-bring them to you? A nice try, Duck Newton, but I think you’re forgetting that I hold all the cards here. You’re the one who’s scared of seeing me, not the other way around.” 

Well that wouldn’t stand. 

“Ok, see, first of all let’s get one thing straight. I can be plenty scary, I’ve got the range. And second of all that isn’t hardly fair, considering you sprung your moth form on me the first time. I think a transformation into just about anything is going to freak a guy out for a second, but really if you ask me I don’t know what all the mothman fuss is about. I’ve seen you twice now, and if anything you seem kind of cuddly.” 

He had meant the last part to be a dig, but he began to worry it had hit Indrid a bit harder than he’d intended, as for several beats the man didn’t respond at all - a silence that was even longer than it seemed if you counted the fact that he almost certainly knew what Duck was going to say. But just as the ranger was about to ask if he’d gone too far, a fuzzy hand reached out from the slightly opened door. 

“Yes, well, I’m sure I’m not in a mood to cuddle anything tonight, what with the amount of times I’ve been hit by things today. And yes-“ he cut Duck off just as he began to inhale to make a response, “I know you apologize. It’s quite alright, I’m not as fragile as my human form might lead you to believe. Now, if you please, my glasses?” 

Duck walked the short distance that separated them, wiping off the glasses with the hem of his shirt before handing them over without a word. Almost as soon as the hand had retracted back into the Winnebago the door swung open dramatically, and there was Indrid in all his greasy human glory. His slightly-too-wide smile threatened to split his face in half, but the genuineness of it shocked Duck for a brief moment. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, but the soft grin he saw now seemed like it might be the realest one he’d been given by the man so far. It was almost enough to distract him completely from the fact that Indrid now had two black eyes peeking out from just below his large frames - one from the goat man earlier, and one presumably from Duck. 

He smacked his forehead and groaned, and Indrid’s cheeriness faltered ever so slightly. 

“Shit, Indrid, I’m real sorry about that punch. I know you said it’s fine, but really-“

“-is it? Of course. You saved my life, Duck Newton. Granted, I knew you would, but even so. You went into danger without a question, and even dented your sword a bit, just for me. The mothman, of all people. I’ve had some suspicions about you for quite some time, and it seems I may be right.” 

Duck waited a moment, but Indrid seemed perfectly content not to elaborate on that point. So he instead focused on another. “What do you mean, the mothman of all people?” 

“Oh, nothing really. Just that I know how your people tend to perceive me. I can’t say I’m all that popular even among my own kind, sometimes. But you set that aside and rescued me anyway, it was true heroism.” Indrid smiled once more, but Duck saw that the softness he’d caught a glimpse of earlier had vanished. 

“Now hang on just a minute. I didn’t rescue you in spite of your being the mothman. Or because of it, for that matter. I rescued you because you’re Indrid, and I sort of had the feeling we were getting to be friends.” 

It was then that for the second time, Duck saw a sliver of surprise cross Indrid’s face. This time the display was much smaller, and much quicker, but having seen it once before he now knew what to look for. 

“That is,” he backpedalled, “if that’s alright with you, I mean. I don’t want to assume. Just seemed like we were getting along and all…” 

“Of course I’ll be your friend, Duck Newton. I would be honored.” Indrid said, his voice going suddenly quiet. And Duck began to wonder, for whatever reason, what expression his eyes might be giving him under those impenetrably reflective lenses. 

“Oh good.” Duck said, huffing out a sigh. “Well, good. Good. I guess I should be heading home, unless-“ 

“There’s a Twilight Zone marathon happening on the public access station.” Indrid blurted out. “A new episode is starting in 5 minutes, the ending is bad, but the beginning and middle are a fun ride. You could stay for an episode or two, if you like. Although, no, I’m seeing you picked up a morning shift tomorrow.”

“It’s ok, that’s what coffee is for. I’d love to stay. But I have to warn you, that show always spooks me.” 

And with that, Duck followed him through the door and into the heat. 

******* 

It had been a long while since Indrid Cold had had a friend, and even longer since he’d had one that didn’t seem to get anything out of it. He had, admittedly, looked forward just to see if Duck might have some ulterior motive. Not that he didn’t trust the man, although that in itself had sort of blindsided him. But one can never be too careful. 

As it turned out though, there were no foreseeable futures at all where Duck took advantage of him in any way - nor were there any of the reverse, which Indrid had checked just to be safe. And so he found himself relaxing into the comfort of knowing someone out there liked him. Before too long, that someone became three someones, as Duck had begun to make a point of stopping by his trailer at least once a week - just to chat, or to drop off some eggnog on occasion - and he often brought along Aubrey and Ned. It was only natural, after a few rounds of this, that Indrid began to consider them friends too. He’d even considered asking, just in case, but in almost all of his visions they had given him a look that clearly communicated the thought: “well duh”. So instead he elected to keep his mouth closed and just enjoy it. 

For Indrid, however, friendships had always included a bit of worry. Nothing crippling, but it wasn’t uncommon for him to take a moment out of his day just to check in on how the three were going to be doing in twenty-four hours. And though he never meant to pry, this was always more revealing than a few lighthearted visits ever could be. 

Aubrey’s future was chaotic to witness. Perhaps it was her ADD, or perhaps it was just her personality, but at all times she seemed completely capable of doing almost anything that sprung to her mind. Given a free moment she was just as likely to accidentally start a fire in the lodge’s kitchen as she was to take another stab at learning to ski. Indrid had quickly learned to adapt to the informational overload, and watched over her with his third eye squinted, only looking for vague senses of happiness or harm. 

Ned, for another matter, was surrounded by bad choices. At first this had alarmed Indrid, as Ned seemed to have the potential to commit some sort of crime or cause quite a bit of damage in just about every situation he entered. But after a few days of careful studying, he learned to pick the best decisions from all the ones Ned might consider, and feel safe assuming he would go with those. The success rate of those decisions still had its own wild variety, but the effort of it turned out to be quite touching. 

And then there was Duck. The day Indrid had spent watching Duck’s future a few months ago had turned out to only be the tip of the iceberg. Duck Newton’s future was fascinating to him in a way few people’s ever had been, because it was so simple. While Aubrey and Ned seemed to have endless and often disastrous possibilities swirling around them like flies, Duck was a constant. He enjoyed his routine, and rather than becoming bored as he would’ve assumed, Indrid began to enjoy it with him. In fact, it became part of his own day-to-day. As he woke up every morning, Indrid would make himself a little coffee with a lot of eggnog, and brace himself for a quick peek at Aubrey and Ned, just to make sure they were safe. And then, while he ate breakfast, he would watch Duck. He would watch as he woke up at roughly the same time every morning, and as he went to the same diner for every breakfast. He laughed the day he realized that Duck absolutely refused to talk before 9am, and smiled softly the day before Duck would break that rule when Mrs. Pearson asked him a question about the weather. He saw Duck always eat the same chicken salad sandwich for lunch, and once saw him prepare a french onion soup for dinner that had him so excited he didn’t stop monologuing his process the entire time, as if he were Ina Garten and his cat was his audience of one. 

He often wondered just how guilty he ought to feel about this habit he’d built. His visions had never before felt like this much of an intrusion, but something about it being Duck, and something about how much it had come to mean to Indrid, made it feel wrong. He rationalized that it was hardly the same as spying on someone in the present, and that it was entirely possible one red light on the route to the ranger station would throw off the entirety of what he’d watched and render it nothing but fantasy. But he also eventually landed on the compromise that he was allowed to continue to his DuckTales habit every morning - a name he was certain his friend would find hilarious if he weren’t so likely to find the premise disturbing - as long as Duck never came to know about it. 

Watching Duck a day in advance had also given him a small sense of what it would’ve been like if Indrid were a normal person who had just happened to be his friend. He got to sit with him on the couch as he watched Butch Cassidy for the 100th time, and to ride in the car with him as he yelled atonally along to Carly Rae Jepsen. He got to feel like he was laughing in surprise right as Duck told a joke to his coworkers, rather than a second before. And every so often he had to stop himself from wishing that was just how it was, because really, there was no point in thinking about that. 

Luckily there was also, functionally, an unexpected benefit to all of this. It seemed as if Duck in all his simplicity provided a great enough distraction to Indrid that the visions about his soulmate had all but ceased their attempts to intrude on his brain. For whatever reason, the ranger was like a talisman against one of the things Indrid had begun to fear most, and he certainly owed him something for that. 

It was with that debt in the back of his mind that one day Indrid made an impulsive mistake. 

Or really it was more of a series of mistakes, beginning with the fact that he called Duck well before 9. And then called again, when he predictably refused to answer. 

“Yeah?” Duck said when he finally picked up, the structure of the word barely surviving the way it was being grumbled.

“Duck, it’s Indrid” he said in a rush, “I know you’re on your way out the door, but you have to move your jacket.” 

“Huh?” 

“It’s Indrid. Indrid Cold, your friend? You have to move your jacket. Or the litter box, either one.” 

“……Huh?” The annoyance in Duck’s voice had at least been replaced with confusion, although at this point Indrid was already starting to realize the mistake he’d made. No going back now though. 

“You didn’t hang your jacket on the rack properly, and it’s going to slip off while you’re at work and land on Nemo’s litter box. It’s your favorite one, that jean jacket that fits you pretty well if you don’t mind my saying, and if you don’t move it it’ll get covered in piss, which you won’t be able to clean off, and ultimately you’ll end up throwing it away. You’ll also be quite angry with Nemo. So it’s best if you just-“ and at that point he saw all the futures containing that particular tragedy fade away. “Oh good, thank you….”

And then he fell silent, as the weight of what he had implicitly admitted to began to hit him. Duck, for his part, said nothing as well, although Indrid hoped that was only due to the time at which this was all happening. 

What a way to fuck up. 

 

****** 

Duck remained silent for a few beats, as he waited for his brain to catch up with the situation. He had no idea how visions worked for Indrid, thought he had heard him describe it a few times before. So what had caught his eye about what might be the most mundane and unimportant accident that was going to happen all day? 

“Is the future really going to be that boring today? Not that I’m complaining, Jesus, that would be nice actually.” he finally said, with more clarity than he’d assumed he’d be able to muster. 

“Hm, I’m actually not sure, I haven’t really checked. But I feel I owe you an explanation now-“ Indrid began, an apology already seeping into his voice, and for once Duck got to be the one to interrupt. 

“Well I need to get to the diner for my breakfast right now, or my whole day’s going to get screwed up. Would you-“

“-like to join me? I’d love to. See you there, Duck.” And with that, Indrid abruptly ended the call. 

Duck grabbed his work jacket, sparing a glance at his favorite one, which had now been moved to safety on the opposite side of the coat rack. It was a blue and gold varsity deal, made with denim and covered in stupid pins and patches he’d collected when he was younger and had taken a greater interest in fashion. Confused as he was about what had just happened, he had to admit he was very grateful he wasn’t going to lose it. He loved that thing. 

Rain was once again pouring from the sky by the time he made it to the Nostalgia Diner, as it seemed wont to do these days. It rolled down the windows of the building in sheets, and the sheer amount of it seemed to make the forest behind the building appear even darker than usual. Duck spared it the briefest glance, and stopped in his tracks when he once again saw… something… just out of the corner of his eye. Again, just like the reflective eyes of a large animal in the dark, only this time there were three, two below and one just above them. But as he turned his head to confirm his sanity he found himself sorely disappointed, as once again there were only trees, and more trees behind them. As much as he felt tempted to investigate, he had a mothman to meet. 

As he entered the comfortable warmth of the diner he saw his friend already sitting at his usual table, chatting warmly with Sharon as she filled Duck’s coffee cup. A dusty looking carton of eggnog sat on the table as well, apparently having been found in the back of a fridge somewhere at Indrid’s request. Duck figured that checking the expiration date was only going to ruin his meal, and he chose instead to ignore it as he sat down in his usual seat - which had been left empty, either with Sharon’s prompting, or because Indrid had already known. 

“Well well well, Duck,” said Sharon warmly, “seems like you’re Mr. Popular lately huh? I was just getting to know your pal here, and I won’t tell you I’m not surprised. 15 years of breakfasts and suddenly you decide to invite friends.” 

“Yeah, well,” started Duck, and Sharon raised her eyebrows just slightly. She’d probably left the question vague enough that he could just smile and nod if he wanted. Real nice of her. “Indrid’s an exception, and the other two invited themselves, so that’s not really on me.” 

“Ah, I see” said Sharon, a knowing look in her eye that Duck for the life of him couldn’t parse. “I’ll get your usual going Duck, and those chocolate chip pancakes with extra whip for you Mr. Cold” With that, and a sly wink that flew right over Duck’s head but seemed to make Indrid blush, she left. 

“So,” said Duck finally, after what might have been too long a pause, “any particular reason fate seemed to take an interest in my coat today? I’ve gotta say, I do actually appreciate it. I’d be real sad to lose that thing, had it forever. But still….” And there he trailed off, honestly having expected Indrid to interrupt him by now. But the man was silent, staring at Duck - he assumed, anyway, those glasses really made him difficult to read - with his hands fidgeting at the corner of his placemat and his mouth ever so slightly open. 

After what couldn’t have been more than a second, though, he caught himself, and his expression turned sheepish. “No, nothing quite like that. I have to admit, part of the deal when you chose to be friends with me is that I tend to… keep tabs. Which I’m now realizing sounds creepier than I meant it to. I just like to check in on you three, make sure you’re safe. I apologize if that’s…. uncomfortable for you, though I’m not entirely sure I can stop.” 

That made sense to Duck, and actually he found it a bit touching. “So you knew I was going to bust my ass on the wet floor at Leo’s on Monday? Why didn’t you call me then?” 

Indrid had begun to laugh before he even started talking, and it was a nice sound, Duck thought. A real high pitched giggle that made his nose scrunch up and his glasses slip down ever so slightly. “Ah, forgive my saying so, but that was one of the best visions I’ve had in a long time. And I knew you’d be fine, as long as you didn’t try to catch yourself on the canned peach display. There were much greater repercussions to your losing such a good looking jacket, in my opinion. Fashion is everything you know.” 

 

“Oh yeah,” Duck snorted, “look at us two. A greasy-haired guy in about 5 layers of coats, and a tubby forest ranger. I can’t believe we’re not being stopped for photos.” 

“Oh please, you know very well you pull off that ranger outfit better than just about anyone I’ve ever met. Don’t be coy, Duck Newton.” 

Duck felt his cheeks heat up against his will, and looked out the window through the rain at absolutely nothing in particular, until he had a very important realization. “So wait, if you keep track of what we’re going to be up to, that means…” And there he trailed off, tongue between his lips as he concentrated. 

Indrid stared again, his mouth open once more, but for only a second before he started to laugh uproariously. “Oh, I really dare you to make good on that one.” 

“So you saw that, then? It worked?” 

“Yes, I saw your brilliant plan to shout ‘Indrid Cold can munch my shorts’ 5 miles into your observational hike tomorrow. Although while I’m on a roll with saving your bacon I should warn you, there’s at least 7 different universes in which you’re not as alone as you think you are, and you give a real scare to some cryptid-hunting tourists.” 

Duck chuckled. “Who’s to say that’s a bad thing. Might get Ned some more customers.” 

“I get the sense he gets more than he ought to anyway.” 

It was then that Sharon returned with two plates heaped full of breakfast for the pair of them. “Here you go boys,” she said, “glad to see you’re getting along so well. And here,” she slipped a couple of stuffed pastry bags out of her apron and onto their table, “some treats for later. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m gonna have to go give Dale a good hiding about something.” And with that she made her exit toward the kitchen, wielding her waitressing notebook with a ferocity that would strike fear into the heart of any man. 

“I like her,” said Indrid decisively. Duck nodded in complete agreement. 

It was then that the familiarity of having company for breakfast brought back the previous conversation he’d had with Aubrey at this very table, and for the first time he realized that the Sylvans he knew might have some idea about this soulmate business. It had been so long since he’d gotten his hopes up that he’d essentially stopped searching altogether. 

“Indrid, you mind if I ask you a question? It might be personal, I’m not really sure what the manners are supposed to be on this one.” 

Indrid nodded, his face tightening in a way Duck had come to associate with his reading the future. But he had yet to express any discomfort, so Duck pressed on. 

“Well, I was wondering if you knew anything about soulmates. I get the feeling Sylvans have them, because Aubrey has got a mark and I’m near positive it’s got to be for Dani. It’s just-“ 

“-not a common thing here, and I’m curious. Yes, soulmates are very much a thing on Sylvain. Not everybody has them, and it’s generally considered a gift if you do. Not sure if I can concur on that one.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“My relationship with the idea of soulmates itself is…. complicated. But it’s not something I’m interested in pursuing, I’m certain about that.” Indrid’s face had become pinched, now, and Duck was starting to regret bringing up the subject. “You are right about Dani and Aubrey, I believe I can tell you that much. And although they haven’t actually had a conversation about it yet, I’m sensing they likely will soon… and I’m very happy for them, don’t get me wrong. But my situation is different from theirs. Frankly I sometimes wish I didn’t have a soulmate at all. It’s such pressure to have a cosmically fated other half, it makes you feel closed off from any other routes you might have thought about pursuing. I’ve been feeling that, especially, as of late.” 

The reflective lenses of Indrid’s glasses - which did such an unfortunate amount in hiding his expressions from Duck - couldn’t hide now that although he had no proof, he was certain the man wasn’t looking at him anymore. He felt terrible about bringing up a subject that was so clearly difficult for his friend, as well as terrible just in general - although the source of that feeling was much more difficult to place. For a moment he briefly considered asking Indrid to look into his future, just this once, to see if Duck ever would meet his soulmate. But before he could make up his mind as to the repercussions of the idea, a bloodcurdling scream cut through the cozy diner atmosphere like a line cook’s best knife through a prime cut of meat. 

Indrid was already standing and running through the exit milliseconds before the scream even happened, and Duck shook off the weird cloud he had cast upon himself as he followed at his heel. They rounded the corner of the diner at a sprint, heading toward the rear of the building where it faced the forest. 

There they saw a scene that broke Duck’s heart, and almost before his eyes had even registered what was before him he felt the comforting squeeze of Indrid’s cool hand on his shoulder. There, flanked by two trash bags she’d clearly been running to the outside dumpster, was the dead body of Sharon the waitress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Sharon....  
> I've got the rest of this fic all laid out, and I'm going to be stuck on a plane for 12 hours this Sunday, so it's very likely going to be completed quickly! But I thought I'd post what I've got now to gauge general interest. I was frankly shocked when I checked the tag for this duo and saw it wasn't chock-a-block full of soulmate AUs, as Griffin would put it. It's so rich with possibilities...  
> Anyhow, a few additional notes: Duck is trans, but it's not likely to come up as a plot point, because it's my experience that the longer you've been transitioning the less it becomes relevant to your day-to-day. Duck's just chilling. You're also free to read Duck as autistic, he's written with that perspective in mind but I'm not going to force you at gunpoint either.  
> Lastly, this isn't beta-ed, but I've tried my best. Let me know if I made any mistakes.


	2. Chapter 2

After hundreds of years of anticipating the future in all its potential forms, Indrid would’ve thought the actual unpredictability of it would have stopped surprising him. Unfortunately, as it turned out, watching events take a wild veer to the left from the safety of his Winnebago was vastly different from experiencing them for himself nearly as they happened. It almost made him wonder if he ought to get out more. 

When Duck had given him the invitation to breakfast, he hadn’t dared check what the conversation they were going to have would hold. It felt so entirely possible that Duck was going to withdraw his earlier offer of friendship and ask that they keep professional boundaries from that point on, and the thought alone made him a bit sick to his stomach. If he was going to have to go through that experience, he wanted only to have to do it the once. 

On the other hand, he knew very well that an invitation to breakfast was not something Duck handed out carelessly. Much as the man loved his friends - and he had quite a few of them - it seemed that the way he started his day was sacred to him, and Indrid could respect that. But the weight of Duck’s offer, and the fact that he had no idea on earth what it said about his thoughts on Indrid, made his head buzz. 

So it was with that collection of odd symptoms, and a whopping load of generic-brand anxiety to top it all off, that Indrid made his way to the Nostalgia Diner. 

He arrived four-and-a-half minutes earlier than Duck would, thanks to the prescience that allowed him to start dressing to leave his trailer before they’d even gotten off the phone, and he explained to Sharon before she had the chance to shoo him away from Duck’s table that he was in fact there to meet with the man himself. Her surprise confused him, just for the briefest moment. After a few weeks of sharing a one-sided meal with Duck in his own way, he’d almost forgotten that none of that had been real, and their usual waitress was a stranger to him. Still, his familiarity with the entirely new situation worked in his favor, and he was able to charm her into double checking in the back just to make absolutely sure they didn’t have any eggnog. 

It was then that he noticed how something about the moment felt ever so slightly wrong. As if there were some sort of assailant event waiting just around the corner to take a strike at his day. But he felt safe in assuming that it was his own reticence about the situation he’d put himself in, rather than any tangible aura, and he chose to ignore it. Still, it was an odd relief to find that Duck’s physical presence alone, as he entered the diner and removed his soaking jacket, served to lift his spirits - despite the fact that he was also the very thing Indrid was certain he was fearing most. 

As luck would have it though, Duck kindheartedly accepted Indrid’s explanation of his odd surveillance habits without many questions, almost giving the impression that he really trusted him. And while the conversation that followed after was brief, it was not without charm. Indrid, having lived over a hundred years on this earth (and a great deal longer on his own than it would be polite to mention), had long ago developed a condition comorbid with a long existence: boredom. Not in a large cosmic way that caused him to faint in Byronic despair on the faded corduroy couch of his Winnebago, but rather as a dull hum in the background of every conversation. “Always the same” it said, “always the same”. It was actually nice in its own way, and for Indrid especially it was no great deal. Most people had the same spectrum of reactions to most trivial things, made the same handful of jokes, responded with the same situationally-appropriate emotions. And a good thing too, or his visions would become far too overwhelming. Still, it meant that truly exciting conversations - after centuries worth of talking - were few and far between. 

However, Duck - it seemed, - would always be his exception. After the initial relief at his absolution for his prying, Indrid began to notice a comforting phenomenon that seemed to radiate from his friend in waves and wrap around him like a heated blanket. He might’ve noticed it before, if it weren’t by nature a thing designed to be missed. When he was with Duck, it was almost like he was living his life in real time. The visions were always there, just in the corner of his eye, like the many televisions of the Buffalo Wild Wings he made a habit of avoiding. But he found himself so distracted by the movement of Duck’s hands, the dimple on just the left cheek when he laughed, the excited inhale of his breath as he got ready to make a joke he was particularly proud of. The general sense of his being physically there, and oh so close… It all worked together in such a way that Indrid found himself occasionally forgetting to check what was coming next at all. Nothing could be more exciting than the present, the way the slow fan above them lazily blew the air around, the pervasive smell of cheap coffee, the faint sound of cursing coming from the kitchen - only just audible over the tinny crooning from the speakers as The Penguins pleaded “Earth Angel, Earth Angel, please be mine”. Duck looking at him and him looking back. 

The conversation itself, too, seemed to always feel new. Not that his friend was astronomically different and unexpected by nature. While he did have his moments of particular uniqueness - making Indrid laugh out loud a few seconds before he chose to voice a truly unexpected joke, and occasionally giving a response that made him pause as he wondered what exactly it was like in the brain under that Park Ranger widebrim - he had an equal amount of perfectly ordinary responses as well. Only that was actually what made the whole thing so odd, they truly did feel perfect. Duck could give him a sideways glance and a grunt and Indrid had begun to suspect he’d find it as wholly enchanting as anything he’d ever heard, if only for the reason that it was Duck who was saying it. 

Indrid would later kick himself for this great distraction he noticed and chose to do nothing about. To some degree, he could be forgiven. As he already tried not to examine the realizations that were creating a warm glow in the lower half of his stomach, the subject matter turned rather abruptly bleak, and he found himself confronting the reality of his fated soulmate in the least abstract terms he had allowed himself in at least 3 decades. Somehow, before now, he had always taken the concept of love as being inseparably welded to the idea that there was someone in particular he was supposed to give his love to. He’d always promised himself he wouldn’t fall into it, never considering a future in which he didn’t have a say in the matter. 

But that was the thing. The idea that there was one single person out there to whom he owed his heart was one of such cosmic pressure, he wasn’t sure he altogether deserved it - for that matter, he didn’t think his soulmate deserved to be dealing with him. But the thought that someone he might just happen to meet - with no cupids and celestial harps but rather with chocolate chip pancakes and a laugh snorted through a mouthful of orange juice - that that sort of someone would accept his heart without expecting anything as beautiful as the universe’s blessing from him in return. It struck him from an unexpected blind spot with the smallest and most painful tug of yearning he refused to consciously address for fear it would unravel him. 

It was with this new weight on his shoulders that he found himself seeing everything he should’ve prevented far too late. He was so behind he didn’t even catch a glimpse of the creature that attacked poor Sharon, only the overwhelming probability that she would be dead before they reached her. 

And so there they were, only a handful of minutes later, with Duck standing in the rain, and Indrid standing far behind him. The Lodge had been called immediately upon their unfortunate discovery, and as a result Aubrey, Dani, and Ned had all been dispatched to surveil the scene as best they could. 

Aubrey, for her part, made a beeline for Duck - and after asking brief permission proceeded to wrap her arms around his slumped shoulders. He didn’t cry, but the rain fell down his face in streaks as if the environment had decided to take on that part of the grieving process for him. Indrid felt himself selfishly wishing he could offer some comfort of his own. The ache to pull Duck close to him and try to sooth his pain was such a physical one he found himself gripping the loose fabric of his pant leg in a tight fist just to keep from outstretching his arm. But he knew the greatest comfort would come from those Duck was closest to, and as much as it chafed the best thing he could do was just stay out of the way. 

Ned, meanwhile, had through some stroke of luck been able to convince the sheriff’s department that he had a legal right to be back behind their police tape. His argument had seemingly been a long-winded monologue that had pulled equally from his views on the constitution and a claimed private investigator’s license, which Indrid was almost positive had been made up entirely. And despite the fact that it made them all accomplices to obstruction of justice, it certainly had worked, as the man was now apparently preparing to go dumpster diving in the hopes that they might find any sort of clue at all about the situation. 

There certainly weren’t very many to be found elsewhere, and that was the problem at hand. The dumpster’s proximity to the edge of the woods meant that it attracted all sorts of animals and no small amount of people, making any muddy footprints impossible to distinguish. And the victim herself held no clues either. Despite the low light of the overcast day, it seemed clear that the only thing about her that would indicate anything amiss was in fact the three long slashes along her back that did her in. Even they were perfectly even and perfectly straight, providing no information about the assailant and their approach - other than the fact that they were far too intentional for a wild animal, and far too large. Indrid quietly hoped she hadn’t suffered. 

He averted his eyes, unable to look any longer, and it was then that he noticed Dani staring at him with unmasked curiosity, and Duck - Aubrey having moved on to excitedly join Ned in his dumpster search - staring at the both of them. As much as Indrid knew he had a right to be anywhere he liked, he suddenly began to worry that Dani would ask what he was doing there, as she was so clearly wondering. He had never been one to over-socialize, and in the last few decades especially he had withdrawn to an extent he wasn’t even sure he had realized until just now. It was truly odd of him to be out and about these days, and he knew that. But the nice breakfast he had shared with Duck had become suddenly sacred, especially when given such abrupt contrast with the grisly nature of the world. And he irrationally began to fear that someone questioning it would mar how beautifully normal it had been, and prevent it from ever happening again. 

He almost tried to desperately cut her off, as she was about to open her mouth, before he saw that she was going to ask a different question altogether. 

“Why didn’t you see this coming?” She asked, without accusation but with genuine curiosity. 

It was hardly a better question, really. In fact, were he to answer truthfully it was probably worse. 

“I was…. distracted,” said Indrid, “I wasn’t paying enough attention. I’m sorry.” He addressed the last part to Duck, who jumped in quickly at being mentioned. 

“No,” Duck interjected as he walked closer to join their conversation, ”No, that was probably my fault. I was asking all sorts of personal questions, I should’ve laid off of you. I’m sorry about that.” 

Their joint response didn’t seem to do much for Dani, in fact if anything she now looked more curious than ever. But Duck apparently didn’t notice this time, now staring morosely over at Sharon’s body. 

“I just wish we could’ve stopped this.” Duck said quietly, mouth downturned, “I just… I owed her a lot. She was always real good to me. I never saw her much outside of the diner but we’d gotten to be kind of friends. She was always real sweet, giving me pastries. Made me a Candlenight’s wreath last year, it was one of her hobbies… I’m gonna miss her.” 

Indrid’s hand, still clenched at his side, began to ache. 

Luckily, only a second later a crash rang out, and the sound of glass bottles skittering across the pavement served as a decent distraction to them all. Aubrey and Ned seemed to have abandoned their quest, which had been entirely fruitless save for the banana peel stuck to Ned’s jacket, and were hopping out of the dumpster with all the grace and agility of a newborn cow. 

“Well, I’m glad to see you three weren’t just twiddling your thumbs while we did all the real work.” Ned called over in dramatic annoyance as they approached, “they’re going to call me Ned Tetanus Chicane after that one, I’m sure.” 

“More like Ned Whiny Bitchcane,” said Aubrey, “coffee grounds are good for your skin. I think, anyway.” 

“Not down my pants they’re not.” Ned grumbled. “Anyway, we found nothing. Sorry Duck.” 

“Hold on though,” Aubrey cut in quickly, “I’ve watched so much NYPD Blue and NYPD Two I’m practically a professional at this point. And whenever they get to the middle of the episode, where they think they’re all out clues, they go back and retrace their steps. So we just need to figure out what happened this morning that ended with all of us here.” At this, she turned to face Duck and Indrid specifically. “What were you two up to, what do you remember?” 

An inexplicable blush seemed to have spread across Duck’s cheeks out of nowhere, and he was making very concentrated eye contact with the space over Aubrey’s shoulder. 

“We were just, I dunno, talking.” Said Duck. “Just shooting the breeze and what have you. Uh… Sharon gave Indrid some ancient nog that looked real gnarly. She gave us some pastries too…” 

He trailed off frowning, and Indrid thought it best to cut in before he followed that train of thought much farther again. “The last time we saw her was when she brought out our food.” He said. “We didn’t chat much, she seemed rather distracted by something in the kitchen. I believe she told us she was going to yell at somebody.” 

“There it is!” Shouted Aubrey triumphantly. “There’s our clue. To the kitchen!” 

And without even checking behind to see if they were following, she bounded off toward the diner’s back door. After looking at each other in confusion about her abrupt exit, and then to Dani for clarification - receiving only a shrug and a grin in return - they did indeed follow suit. Luckily, it seemed Ned’s charm was in full force today, and the officers guarding the door let them through without question. 

Inside, sitting among the crates of vegetables and perhaps a bit close to the now cooling stove, they found the cook, Dale. He was wrapped in a shock blanket and clearly distressed, his large frame slumping inward and his unshaven face in his hands. But he seemed to brighten at seeing Duck’s familiar visage, at least, as the gang began to crowd around him. 

“How you doing Duck?” He asked. 

“Holding up, how about yourself?” Duck responded. 

“Ah, well.” Dale let out an extended sigh. “She was my best friend. And we liked to fight and all, just how we joked. But before she went to take out the trash… We got into it for real, a bit. I’m regretting that now. I’m sorry, Duck, and uh… all the rest of you. I don’t mean to unload I just-”

“We understand.” Ned cut in smoothly. “What was it you were fighting about though? We’re all friends of Duck’s, you can trust us. And it might help, you know, to get some of this off your chest.” 

Dale seemed to consider this for a moment, before deciding he believed him. “Well… Don’t go telling the Health Department on me now. But Sharon might have seen me drop a patty on the ground and reuse it. Just for a second, and it was for Rick’s hamburger. You know Rick, Duck?” 

“Yeah,” Duck seemed to understand completely based on the name alone. “Real asshole. Always lying to me about his fire safety practices when he goes on hunting trips, but I’ve never been able to catch him in the act.” 

“Yeah, fuck Rick!” Aubrey cut in, though Indrid suspected she’d never met the man in her life. 

“Exactly!” said Dale, seeming slightly relieved, “So it was for Rick’s burger, and I knew it was the last in the package, which meant if I got a new patty I’d have to open a new one and then they all expire quicker. And you know I’d never do anything like that with your order Duck. I always prepare the egg wash for your french toast separate, with the nutmeg and cinnamon and all that cause I know you like it….” He trailed off, for a moment. “Well, anyway, Sharon saw me, and she got on my ass about it, and about how this place was everything we’ve got so I can’t go letting it get closed down. I thought she was being sort of dramatic, told her to mind her damn business, actually. But she was probably right as always. And then she stomped off all in a tizzy to take out the trash, and that’s… that’s the last I’ll ever see of her.” 

Ned patted the man’s shoulder in a comforting, if slightly condescending, way. But it seemed to help. 

“Is there anything else you remember happening, anything it all?” Duck asked in a comforting voice. “Doesn’t even have to seem relevant, you never know what might help.” 

“You guys… You guys think there’s something going on here?” Dale seemed confused. “The police were telling me it was probably just a bear, but you seem to suspect foul play or something.” 

“Nice use of ‘foul play’.” Aubrey cut in. “You watch NYPD Blue?” 

“All Rise, actually.” Responded Dale. “But you guys seem to think there’s more going on here than just a bear attack. Is it… do you think it’s aliens?” 

“You never really know” said Ned sagely. “There’s no way to say for certain until we have all the facts.” 

“It’s not aliens” Duck said, clearly eager to nip this in the bud. “We don’t know what we think, but we don’t think it’s aliens.” 

“Well aliens would make sense actually.” Said Dale. “That’d explain what the light by the back door was up to.” At this everyone leaned in, clearly more interested than Dale had expected them to be in that piece of information. “Yeah, it was flickering like anything. I assumed it was something to do with the rain, but now that I think of it all the other lights were just fine, it was just that one. And now it’s out.” 

The group turned their heads as one, and sure enough, the single light mounted above the heavy metal back door was dark. 

“Besides that, though…” Dale continued. “I’m not sure I can think of anything else. The strangest thing that had happened up until then was Duck here bringing in a date. Sharon was fit to burst when she told me, she was so excited about how you were getting along. Bout fucking time is what I said.” 

By this point in his sentence, Aubrey and Dani were subtly nudging each other to try and keep from laughing too overtly, and Neds eyebrows seemed like they were preparing to launch into orbit. 

“Well it’s not quite…” began Duck, his face almost as red as the bag of tomatoes on the shelf beside him. “You see… Whew, it’s…. We were just getting together for breakfast. Well actually, he called me before breakfast, but it wasn’t for…. At least I didn’t mean for….. You know how it’s impolite to assume? I uh…… SHIT. Shit. Fuck me.” 

Indrid, for his part, was only catching every other word Duck was about to say. And while he knew he ought to bail his friend out before he got so uncomfortable with the implications that he got uncomfortable with Indrid himself, his brain was having a hard time comprehending the idea of a suitable response, much less the order in which the words it contained should go. 

Luckily Ned eventually showed them mercy, and made some sort of excuse, thanking Dale for his time as he shoved a now motionless Duck out through the door they came in. Indrid, Aubrey, and Dani followed suit, the latter two whispering and giggling while the former did his best to pretend the last minute and a half hadn’t happened. 

Duck, at least, seemed on the same page with that, and as they once more found themselves outside in the cold rain he joined in with the others as they began to plan their next move. A meeting at the lodge, after his shift at the ranger station ended, and Indrid was invited too if he wanted to come. He nodded silently, and let them say their goodbyes to each other as he sat apart from them, frozen with the very specific feeling of an impending realization. 

The realization let itself loom for a moment too long, whether it was due to the stress his brain had already undergone that morning or just the general distracted haze he’d found himself in ever since breakfast had begun. And so the others had almost made it to their respective means of transportation before it finally occurred to him just what it was he was seeing, and what it was he had been missing this whole time. He found himself shouting with desperation to be heard, his voice echoing slightly through the forest to his left. 

“Duck!” He called. “Aubrey! Dani! Ned! The rain! The rain, it’s… it’s falling downwards!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, everyone, for updating later than I had hoped! It turned out that right as I went to get on the very long flight where I'd planned to write almost all of this fic, my laptop decided to fuck off this mortal coil for good. And after that I was in the Scottish Highlands for 10 days with no way of getting it fixed.  
> Anyway, we're here now, and the outline for the rest of the fic got saved even if my previous work on this chapter did not! Discerning readers will notice the chapter total has changed, not because my plans for the story are changing but rather because I wanted to update this more quickly since I am now behind my writing schedule, so I may release it in smaller chunks. Next update should come in the next few days, if the power of G-d and anime remain on my side.  
> (Also, I should note: as aforementioned, this is an alternate universe fic taking place after episode 19. So anything that happens in coming episodes, including episode 28, will not effect the story. Although it does make writing certain people so much harder....)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually finished this chapter earlier today, but when I took a break between writing and proofreading I got the notification that Ep 29 had been uploaded, and I of course dropped everything - literally midway through making a sandwich - to go on a hike and listen. I won't post spoilers, and my non-spoiler thoughts on the episode aren't really translatable to common English, so we'll just have to get on with this fanfiction instead. Enjoy!

Duck Newton’s morning had been quite a headache, and yet the rain continued to pour, seemingly unsympathetic to this. He’d noticed, as he drove his Ranger Bronco away from the diner and the confusing cloud of emotions that encircled it, that once he’d gotten a block or two away the frankly excessive precipitation had at least had the decency to go back to pouring both upwards and downwards - giving the general impression that God had invested in one of those fancy new showers. He had also noticed, strangely, how comforting he’d always found the town’s odd weather patterns, despite not ever having noticed them until it was pointed out to him that they’d stopped. As it was, the sound of the gentle patter against the underside of his truck provided the exact kind of comfortable familiarity the first 3 hours of his day had been lacking. 

Not that it had been all bad, necessarily. In fact, the comfortable unfamiliarity of breakfast had been a pleasant sort of surprise. The kind you don’t see coming, but the moment it does you know it could never have been anything else. 

He was struck by the implications of that sensation as he took a left onto the muddy forest road leading to the ranger station. He had always had a soft spot for Indrid, who had somehow been able to turn an outrageous wardrobe and a shitty old Winnebago full of crumpled up paper into something charming. But the more he got to know him, the more he got a sense that he always had. It was like becoming reacquainted with an old friend from a past life. Like the first time they met, they hadn’t actually met at all. They’d only recognized one another. 

It was strange, certainly, and Duck couldn’t help but wonder if he was alone in the feeling, or if Indrid might have it too. He wasn’t sure he dared ask. 

The rain had hardly let up by the time he reached the small cabin that served as the Parks Service home base, and the rustle of the branches from the Virginia pines as they were jostled in all directions by the downpour was thunderous. Opening the door to the station, however, provided a welcome blast of warm air and comfort - as did the delighted hello from Juno, who was already sitting at her desk near the fireplace. 

Much as the government seemed to have an endless budget for state banquets and football stadiums, Duck had always found it to be the case that when the Parks Service were the ones needing money, times became suddenly tight. For this reason the station was hardly lavish, nor was it even up to standard if he was remembering his ranger’s handbook correctly. But the lack of supervision from anyone but their immediate superiors, given no one from higher up ever wanted to make the trip out, had meant that they’d been able to turn the place into a sort of second home. Desks were clustered together - rather than maintaining a regulation distance - to make collaboration easier. The oldest radio this side of the Mississippi sat in the corner, just barely picking up enough signal to deliver most, but not all, of Norah Jones’ honeyed voice as she sang “and then there was you, my dear”. And after 10 years of formal complaints and informal whining, Duck and Juno had abandoned all hope of the heating system ever being fixed, instead just climbing up the chimney themselves one summer to clear it of the various debris and bird’s nests it had accumulated. This meant that now there was almost always a fire crackling softly in the hearth whenever the sky so much as thought about storming, and through an unspoken collective effort between the rangers they were never out of marshmallows. 

As familiar as the sight of his workplace was, it was the sort of thing that made Duck count his blessings, especially after the kind of day he’d had. Also comforting was the knowledge that - due to the storm still brewing outside - there’d be little chance to do any observational work today. And while typically that thought would make him a little antsy, for once he wanted nothing more than to sit at his desk and work on his new model ship as he waited for the phone not to ring. 

Hours later, he felt safe in saying that his luck had finally turned. The storm had given no indication that it had any interest in stopping, and by the time Juno was getting ready to leave for home Duck had already made significant headway on the starboard side of his carrack. Thanks to the bare bones staffing they employed this early in the season, Juno’s departure also signaled the beginning of 3 hours of alone time - interruptible only by someone stupid enough to be able to catch themselves on fire in this weather, or the eventual arrival of the next guy on shift, whichever came first. 

As he said his goodbyes to his friend and settled down for the first real amount of holistic peace and quiet he’d had all day, Duck found himself inexplicably tired on the bone deep level even coffee couldn’t touch. And though he tried to fight it - even walking some laps around the perimeter of the room to try and wake himself up - the warmth of the fire and the gentle tapping of rain and pine branches against the windows served to lull him into such a comfortable state that he was soon looking blankly at his model ship, and then at a much blearier version of the fireplace than he’d ever remembered there being, and then at nothing at all. 

And then, of course, he opened his eyes. 

There had always been, as soon as he’d become aware of their existence, a certain quality to his visions that set them apart from any regular dream. It was the sense that this time - even in the abstract context the future lent - the danger was real. As terrifying as his worst nightmares could be, they always held some level of security broiling underneath, as if he knew they were something he could wake up from. The same was not true of a vision.

It was with this note of trepidation that he cast his eyes around in the darkened gloom he found himself in, and attempted to ascertain his surroundings. It was immediately clear that he was in a forest - and deeply imbedded in it too, as the level of primary overgrowth around him had created a thick canopy overhead, barely allowing any light at all to slice its way through down to the forest floor. Luckily, it seemed that future Duck still insisted on always being prepared, and he gratefully unclipped his flashlight from his belt to cast some illumination into the darkness. 

What next became apparent to him wasn’t anything visible, it was instead the pounding of his heart. It thumped determinedly against his chest, as if he’d just finished running quite a long distance over a short period of time, and he slowed his breaths in response - taking them more deeply in an attempt to fight some of the exhaustion he was now noticing he felt. But while this helped on a physical level, as he felt his shoulders relax and his lungs begin to burn in the sweet stretching way that meant recovery, it did nothing for the fluttering rhythm in his ribcage. 

Which meant this wasn’t just about the running. This was about fear. 

Fear, no longer in the vague sense that it always accompanied being thrust into the not-yet-known without being given context. But rather in the very clear sense of a real and present danger. Duck once more swept his flashlight through the thick growth of trees, and was this time able to get a more substantial sense of his position. The heavy concentration of sugar maples lead him to believe that - as long as he was still in West Virginia at all - he was most likely on the Northern side of the forest. A theory that was proven correct when he caught a glimpse through a break in the foliage of what was unquestionably Sundial Peak, a small eyot of rock that struck out from deep inside the Monongahela National Forest just a few miles from Mount Kepler. 

He was about to head off in the direction of the familiar when something else caught his eye. Something he’d seen before twice now. Without even fully registering what it was he was expecting to find, he pointed his flashlight sharply to the left, where it illuminated the visage of… almost nothing at all. He peered closer, trying to get a sense of just what it was he wasn’t seeing. Because some part of his brain was telling him that there was definitely something there to be seen, were he to find it. Something he’d been missing. Hidden not behind the closely spaced trunks of the trees and the harshly shaped wild brush beneath them, but rather, somehow, in front of it. As he cast the beam of his flashlight slowly upwards, though, the only sight that greeted him was the one he had seen so many times previously. The golden green reflection of a wild animal’s eyes, three of them, closer to Duck than they ever had been before. 

He took off running. 

He heard no pursuer as he bashed his way through the heavy vegetation, narrowly missing head-on collisions with tree trunks and low hanging branches on a regular basis. Or at least, he heard no obvious noises of pursuit. But while the sound of crashing brush and the thundering of footsteps was eerily absent, he did hear the distinct cracking sound of wood being split cleanly through, repeated over and over in near proximity to wherever he found himself next, and he knew he was very far from safe. 

He had pointed himself in the general direction of Sundial Peak, as he hoped the familiarity of the landscape might give him some advantage. And sure enough, before too long the old-growth forest began to thin, the clear signs of management among the trees that continued to fly past him indicating that he was fast approaching a trail-heavy area. Unfortunately, while the odd sounds of the creature that chased him had seemed to become more methodical and far-between, they didn’t stop altogether. And as he approached the base of the scramble to the peak of the small mountain, he found himself confronted with a choice. Double back, or climb. And so he climbed. 

Sundial Peak had, for as long as Duck had known it, been a staple of life in Kepler. It was the first real hike most people ever took, and it was the very one that had once taught him the feeling of being at home in the woods. He remembered a particular time he and Juno and a handful of other high school friends had gone backpacking out there, setting up camp on the shore of the lake at its base and hiking to the top with a cooler of beers and only two water bottles between them to watch the sunset. The others had eventually stumbled off drunkenly back to their tents, and after a good talk between the two of them even Juno had said goodnight - leaving Duck sitting alone at the top of the peak, legs dangling off the sharp drop it took on one side and the night sky stretched through his vision, as he experienced what might have been his first ever encounter with inner peace. 

Since then, he still made it a habit to hike the Sundial regularly. Though at this point he could probably do the whole thing blindfolded and walking backwards, it still always managed to return him to the feeling he’d had the first time he’d climbed it. The sense of being, for once, entirely comfortable in the world. Tucked safely within one of the most beautiful pockets of earth he could ever imagine there being, unseen and with no expectations being made of him at all. 

Still, despite the number of times he’d summited the rock, he doubted he’d ever done it half as fast as he did now. 

By the time he reached the top he’d collected a fair share of scrapes and bruises, and had weaved a tapestry of curses of such complexity even his mother would’ve had to have been begrudgingly proud. And though he hadn’t had a chance to turn and look behind him, there was no doubt in his mind that the creature had followed him the entire time in hot pursuit. 

As he slowed, now at the point of the peak where the ground leveled - where he had once sat with old friends and enjoyed the feeling that the infinite possibilities of his life would last forever - he now instead drew his sword, and cast his eyes around for those three small dots that had caused him so much grief. 

“Ah, Duck Newton,” said Beacon nastily as it unfurled, “I see that you have finally bothered to put yourself on a hero’s journey. I must say I truly never expected it of you. But where is your opponent, Duck Newton? Don’t tell me you bumbled your way up that mountain for nothing… Ah, there it is.” 

And sure enough, with Beacon’s warning there was the accompanying sight of a figure cresting over the curve of the mountain, approaching Duck at a slow but horrifyingly steady pace. 

It was not the creature Duck had expected - given he had expected to see no creature at all. Instead the sight that he now beheld was decidedly physical, and certainly terrifying. 

It was humanoid purely in the academic sense - with two spindly arms that hung far too low from its slumped shoulders, sure, and even had an appropriate number of sinewy legs to match. But Duck knew the instant he saw them that those arms held about as much similarity to the ones he himself had - the ones he used to hug his sister and flick Ned’s ears when he wasn’t looking - as a harp did to a hunting bow. Not only that, but from atop the creature’s head like the branches of a curly willow there grew two wild looking antlers, and hanging heavily from three of the fingers on each hand were sinister looking claws. 

It opened two eyes, and then another, and the light around Duck seemed to dim - even now, high on an unshaded mountain in the midday sun. Not in an earth-wide apocalyptic way that might give him the sense that the world was ending, but in a more localized one that gave him the sense his own world just might be. 

He didn’t know what else to do, and so he gripped Beacon tight with a force that made the sword grunt in annoyance, and spoke. 

“Are you…. You wouldn’t happen to be what killed Sharon at the diner, would you?” He said, doing his best to ignore the way his voice shook. “Cause I’m a peaceable guy, but I swear I’ll make you pay for that.” 

The creature didn’t respond, not that Duck had expected it to once he really thought about it. But it did stop momentarily and cock its head to one side, an antler draping over its boney shoulder, as if it was confused by Duck’s knee-jerk instinct to talk to something so clearly intent on killing him. The respite didn’t last, however, and it continued its approach with no indication of a peaceful intent. 

“Well,” thought Duck, “if that’s how it’s going to be…”

And so he charged. 

A good deal of the fight itself became lost in the blur of the vision, though he was keenly aware of the moment he lost Beacon as the abomination struck him with a blow deft enough to disarm him, and the sword’s cursing scream as it was cast over the edge of the cliff and far down to the rocks below served to bring him to his senses. He backed away from the creature slowly, watching it flex its clawed fingers and approach with the slow and confident pace that must come with knowing your prey is pinned between you and a 300 foot drop. Duck took each step backward with care, painfully aware of how faulty a person’s footing could be this close to the edge of a cliff. And before long he found that he had nowhere else to go - the creature still approaching, and the frantic rush of open air at his back. 

For the life of him, he didn’t know what made him make the decision he did in that moment. It was as if he was given the answer to a math problem without being given the equation it took to get there, and was asked to trust that the answer was the right one - only the stakes were much higher than any of the homework assignments he’d ever ignored. But for some reason, and possibly just because he saw no other option, he decided to trust the invisible hand of fate as it so casually handed him solutions to life and death situations. And without questioning it much further for fear he would lose his nerve, he turned around, gave himself as much of a running start as he could manage with so little ground left to cover, and jumped. 

It might have been the vision blurring itself again, or it might’ve just been the sheer terror of plummeting with impossible speed toward the forest below, but Duck once again found himself losing track of the present for a moment. He had no idea for how long, or what he missed, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, as when he came back to himself he was able to register the crushing knowledge that he was still falling to an almost certain death. 

But only briefly. After what must not have been more than a second of that thought he felt the strong grasp of a hand in his own, grabbing hold of him desperately and causing his shoulder to jolt in protest as his painful trajectory toward the ground was abruptly interrupted for a much preferable alternative. Duck then felt himself being lifted, though he was unable to open his eyes - screwed shut as they were - and found that he was being cradled in someone’s arms. Someone familiar, yet fuzzy. He knew who that was. 

Sure enough, when he finally managed to force his eyelids to open, he saw the welcome face of the Mothman staring back at him. And though he found that moth expressions were harder to read than human ones, there was certainly a lot of something or another playing across Indrid’s insectile eyes in that moment. He was being clutched tight to the soft downy fur on his friend’s chest, almost as if it was more than just the remaining hundred feet or so between them and the ground that made Indrid afraid of letting him go. Or perhaps that was just the truth Duck wanted. It was certainly true, though, that as they began a much slower descent to the base of the rock, Indrid’s grip didn’t loosen in the slightest. 

Duck remembered then that he had something to say to Indrid, he was certain of it. Something very important, even. But he couldn’t begin to remember what. And before he managed to open his mouth to say anything at all, he was no longer safely tucked in the arms of his friend as they flew above the trees, nor was he anywhere near Sundial Peak at all. He was instead back at his desk, the rain having slowed to a gentle patter, and the bottle of paint he had left open beginning to dry. 

He blinked his eyes in bleary confusion, trying to readjust from being so suddenly removed from a near-death situation. And as he did so he realized the details of his vision were beginning to slip from his mind like soup from a strainer. A bit frantic, he did the first thing he could think to do, which was call Indrid - who answered before the first ring even ended. 

“Hello, Duck.” His friend’s warm and lilting voice was like a balm against the residual fear he now noticed was still making his heart race. 

“Yes, uh, Indrid. Hello,” he responded in a rush, “you answered fast, although I guess-“ 

“-you knew I was going to call. Yes I did, in fact I had enough time to grab a pencil and paper too. I don’t know what this is going to be about, but I get the feeling you’re going to ask me to use them.” 

Duck wracked his brain for a moment, before the reason came to him. “Ah, yeah, right. I think I just saw our abomination, and I need you to draw it before I forget. I’m real shitty at art and I don’t want to ruin any of the details that might be important.” 

“You saw it?” Indrid responded in surprise.

“Yeah,” said Duck, “well no, it was in a vision. I saw it, and I think it chased me… Sundial Peak, we were near Sundial Peak, write that down. I’m forgetting all of this so fast.” 

“Why don’t you go ahead and describe it before you lose all the details then” said Indrid, suddenly business-like. 

“Right, right.” Duck paused for a moment, trying to forcefully recall as much as he was able. “Well it was human-shaped. Kinda. But also not. Its arms were much too long, and it had three claws coming from the middle fingers on each hand. It was real tall, and real skinny but still muscular, like I could see its ribcage but its arms still looked freaky strong. Oh, and it had antlers that kinda hung downward, like foliage. And three eyes, two where you’d expect them and one above that. They reflect in the dark, I think I’ve seen them before.” Duck paused, listening to the sound of Indrid’s pencil scratching against paper and the man himself breathing softly as he tried to catch up to Duck’s scattered descriptions. “Is any of that anything? I’m sorry, I know all of this is a long shot, I just wanted to get something down before I lose the details completely.” 

 

“Well, I don’t think I’ve created a rendition that our creature would be willing to pay twenty dollars at a fair for,” said Indrid, “but we might have a vague profile of it now. That was quick thinking, Duck.” He paused for a moment, then, perhaps lost in thought. “Was there anything else you wanted me to write down? Or… anything else you were calling me for?” 

“Oh, yeah, I think so. Just give me a second to remember what… I think I had something else I needed to tell you.” Duck cast his eyes around the room, hoping for a clue that might trigger his memory. Instead he saw the clock. “Ah, right, we’ve got that meeting at the lodge in a half hour or so. Did you want a ride?” 

“A ride?” Asked Indrid. “I do hope you don’t mean on your skateboard.” 

“You know damn well I have a work truck, dipshit. I just care about the environment.” 

Indrid laughed at this, and the last dregs of fear that Duck had been sitting with were washed away. “Well, as long as you mean in your vehicle, I’d appreciate the lift. Thank you Duck.” 

“No problem Indrid. See you soon.”

And with that he hung up the phone. 

 

********** 

 

The incessant rain made steering his truck on the slick pavement hell - especially given a Kepler driver’s idea of being safety conscious was making sure to buckle the beer cooler - so Duck and Indrid were the last to arrive at the lodge, the others having already gathered somewhat conspicuously in the lobby reception area. Luckily, Agent Stern was nowhere in sight, presumably out chasing clues of Bigfoot by the South Fork Trail where Barclay had sworn to him he’d had a sighting just a day ago. 

As the pair arrived, shedding their wet jackets - in Indrid’s case only revealing more jackets underneath - and stomping the mud from their boots, they were greeted warmly by their friends. Or, at least, Duck was. Not that Aubrey and Ned didn’t welcome Indrid in too, with a teasing question about borrowing a coat and a rough pat on the back, respectively. But the others - Dani, Barclay, and even Mama - seemed a bit more wary of him. Not even in a way that read as suspicion, necessarily, but more with a deep and open curiosity that bordered on impolite. Indrid seemed to pick up on this rather quickly, and his body language turned uncomfortable, which worried Duck. He scooted closer to his friend in response. 

“Well,” said Mama “I can’t say I expected to ever see you around here, Indrid.” 

Her tone was not unpleasant, but Duck had about had it with people treating Indrid like he was some stray dog he was insisting on bringing around - when as far as he could tell the guy was perhaps one of the kindest and most interesting people he’d ever had the luck to meet, under all his superficial oddities. 

“Alright,” he said, a touch of annoyance creeping into his voice, “what’s the fucking deal? First Dani’s giving Indrid weird looks at the diner, and now all of you are giving us a face that’s as surprised as if I’d… I dunno, I want to say ‘as if I’d walked in with Bigfoot’, but even that doesn’t work now. So does anyone want to explain what’s going on? I don’t mean to start our meeting by airing everyone’s dirty laundry, but I’m getting real sick and tired of y’all acting like this.” 

The others at least had the good grace to look sheepish, and Indrid for his part looked a bit embarrassed. He made a move, as if to begin explaining the situation himself, but Barclay spoke up first. 

“It’s nothing dramatic, really.” He said. “We don’t have beef or nothing, it’s just that Indrid has always been….” 

“You can just call me a bit of a weird hermit.” Indrid cut in, with a slightly uncomfortable smile. 

“I was going to go with ‘odd loner’,” responded Barclay, “but thank you. It’s not that any of us dislike him, really. He’s just always stayed very closed off, so we’ve never had the chance to like him either. Even if we tried to contact him in person wherever he’d parked his Winnebago that week, he never let us through the door. So seeing him interact with you three is weird enough alone, and seeing him leave his trailer to do it…. Again, I’m not against it happening, it’s just very… very…. surprising.” 

“Oh, well. Alright then.” Said Duck cautiously, after a brief glance at the faces of his friends told him they were telling the truth. And it seemed - despite the forceful eye contact Indrid was now making with the wood-paneled floor - that talking about the tension openly might have eased it a good amount, as Mama and Dani gave him warmer smiles of greeting when he eventually looked up, and Barclay even patted his shoulder companionably for a moment as the group made its way down to the cellar to conduct their business, that particular conversation seemingly over. 

It all still felt a bit strange to Duck, though. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the explanation he was given - rather what confused him was Indrid’s sudden interest in abandoning what must have been nearly a century’s-worth of solitude, if he was remembering everyone’s timelines right. He hadn’t the foggiest idea what might have tempted Indrid to finally reach out and start making friends, and not knowing that bothered him a bit. But he counted himself very lucky to have happened to meet him just when he had. Despite only knowing him a handful of months, Duck was already starting to find that imagining his life without Indrid taking part in it felt impossibly bleak. 

He shook off the thought, though, comfortable in the likelihood that he wouldn’t have to worry about it, and headed down the stairs. 

Their meeting was a frustrating one, as they seemed to have a handful of random pinpoints of information without a single strand of thread to connect them. The drawing Indrid had done over the phone for Duck appeared to be more or less accurate, if vague. Although Duck frankly wasn’t entirely sure if he’d be able to point out any mistaken details anyway, as the specifics of his vision were almost entirely lost to him now. 

With the sketch as they had it, though, they were able to establish a few things. The creature wasn’t always visible, but its three eyes seemed to reflect light even when it was hidden. Its claws were likely its primary point of attack, if Sharon’s body was anything to go on. And at some point, probably in the near future, it was going to be by Sundial Peak. 

It also seemed to have some effect on its immediate environment, given the oddly normal rain it summoned and the lightbulb that had gone out in the back room of the Nostalgia Diner. But the group generally agreed that, in the case of this abomination, physical factors weren’t going to be all that helpful until they figured out what motivated it. Its attacking Sharon hardly seemed random, when there were likely to have been quite a number of hikers between the spot in the woods where Duck had first seen its eyes, and the dumpster at the edge of the forest. As it stood now, they had no ideas as to its weaknesses - or even to its strengths. Just a pile of loose information. 

And so, with nothing more to go on than a discouragingly vague directive to keep their eyes peeled, the group split - Ned and Barclay bickering their way toward the kitchen for some late night brownies, Aubrey and Dani heading off to sit on the covered porch with a large quilt between them, and Mama dragging herself with obvious exhaustion back to her office. 

This left Duck and Indrid standing alone, and just for a moment Duck allowed himself to feel how truly tired he was. The day had been nonstop excitement from beginning to end, and even when he’d tried to get some sleep he’d instead found himself running through the forest with his life on the line. His head slumped forward as he sighed, and the downward angle of his vision meant that he saw Indrid’s hand twitch slightly forward from where it rested by his side for a moment, before fisting tightly in the fabric of his pants leg. Suddenly guilty at the thought that he was stressing his friend out, when he’d clearly had quite the day too, Duck shook himself back into gear, and wordlessly headed out the door and toward his truck, Indrid following a few feet behind. 

They both waved a silent goodbye to Aubrey and Dani before they drove off - the pair now sipping at mugs of hot cocoa no doubt provided by Ned and Barclay - and the thought that his friends were creating moments of happiness for themselves in their own unique ways served to lift Duck’s spirits considerably. He and Indrid sat in companionable silence for a while, listening to the soft patter of the rain pick up into a more significant downpour once more as they drove through the dark tree-lined road back toward town, and Duck couldn’t help but feel that for Indrid and him this might be their very own version of that. 

The silence stretched almost to the end of the lane, before Indrid let out a delighted “Oh!” 

Duck looked at his friend in curiosity, and was greeted by one of those genuine ear-splitting smiles of Indrid’s that he’d been lucky enough to encounter a few times before. 

“It’s Dani and Aubrey,” explained Indrid, “they’re finally about to broach the subject of being soulmates.”

“Hey!” Duck cheered. “Alright! Finally, sheesh, took them long enough.” 

Indrid’s overjoyed smile at his friends’ happiness was so enthusiastic that the scrunching of his nose made his glasses slip down a fraction of an inch, and he readjusted them carefully. A good thing too, Duck thought. He wasn’t sure his Bronc had enough room for a mothman in it. 

It was odd, though, Duck now considered… Indrid had so much distaste for the thought of his own soulmate, but was perfectly willing to celebrate it for someone else. 

“It’s specific to me.” Indrid said, and Duck for a moment wondered if he’d been talking out loud. “You were going to ask - or at least it was likely you were going to, so I assumed you were wondering regardless. I’m not against the idea of soulmates as a concept. I think Dani and Aubrey will be wonderful for each other. I just don’t quite like the idea of mine.” 

“Why not? If you don’t mind my asking.” Duck enquired carefully, trying not to let his interest in the subject play too clearly across his face for reasons he wasn’t even sure of. 

“It’s fine. It’s just that...” Here Indrid paused. “I’ve had hundreds of years to consider the concept, during most of which my soulmate wasn’t even alive. And I’ve spent my entire life seeing the future, watching as fate seemed to make a game of people’s lives. After centuries of witnessing things others would always call divine intervention, it’s hard not to begin to see them all as plain and simple tragedies. I just get the feeling, I suppose, that that’s all my soulmate is. Just a tragedy waiting to happen. And not only that, but…” And this time the pause was almost painfully long. “I do so wish I could choose my own destiny, just this once. You’d think I of all people would recognize the futility of this, but I wish I could make my own decision as to who I fell in love with. Because I get the feeling it might be entirely different from what the universe has intended for me.” 

At this point, Indrid had begun to stare resolutely out the window and into the middle distance, his hands tucked between his knees and his shoulders slumped with a world-weary exhaustion that hardly seemed just physical. Duck felt desperately sorry for the guy. If anyone deserved someone to lighten their load and make them just a bit happier, it was Indrid. And the thought, especially, that he might feel that heart-wrenchingly specific grief that accompanied loving someone who was never supposed to love you back… As so many things with Indrid did, the pain felt familiar. 

He thought about it for a long while, as they merged into the light traffic of the main drag, and he began to wonder - as he had the last time this subject had been brought up - whether he ought to ask Indrid to look into his future with his own soulmate. Because wasn’t there a chance he’d never even meet the guy? At least, he’d always had the feeling it would be a guy. But what if he never showed up, and Duck spent his whole life waiting for someone who he’d never cross paths with, rather than just taking a chance at a different happiness while he had it. 

“Don’t.” Said a small voice, so quiet he almost assumed he’d imagined it. He turned to Indrid. 

“Please don’t ask me what you’re about to, Duck. I can’t do it.” Indrid said, and he sounded truly broken. 

Duck was about to ask what was wrong, and why he couldn’t help him, when the light from Leo’s general store cast itself across his windshield, and drew his attention to something of unfortunately much larger importance. 

“Shit.” He said, slamming on the brakes with enough force to cause the tail of his truck to whip around for a moment. “SHIT. Indrid, the rain’s falling downwards again.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was for some reason a tough one to write, but I'm pleased with how it turned out! It also includes a scene I've been dying to get to from the beginning, so I hope you all enjoy it.   
> And thank you so much to everyone who has left kind comments so far! They all individually make my day, every single time.

The unimaginative consistency of Leo’s general store was something beautiful to Kepler. With its tangibly cheap air conditioning budget, and a structural integrity that still wouldn’t have been updated since the 1989 Asbestos Ban - had a poorly placed Pizza Hut sign not forced the owner’s hand - the plainness and reliability of the shop was a source of great comfort to a population that never found themselves wholly surprised when they were asked by a government type with an oddly vague face if there was any chance they might have spotted an apelike creature in the woods. The industrial lighting that flickered through the colorful varieties of the chips aisle was nothing short of a stained glass window to the weekly crowd who sought their Totinos the way the inhabitants of the sort of larger city that could afford a cathedral might seek communion. 

All this being said, the store was - for once - nearly blissfully empty as Duck and Indrid rushed inside, rain dripping from their coats onto the sacred formica tile as if they’d brought one of the storm clouds in with them. It certainly felt that way, to Duck. The Lodge had already been called, and Ned and Aubrey quickly dispatched, but the odd tone of the conversation he and Indrid had cut short - combined with the imminent threat of an almost entirely unknown danger - was causing him no small amount of anxiety. Leo, for his part, seemed not to notice, as he sat at the checkout counter on the far end of the store, his good eye resolutely fixed on a mini tv while he tried to give the monologuing customer in front of him the clearest indication possible that their transaction was over. 

Not that Duck could blame him, when he saw just who the customer was. It was hard to say whether Mr. Brisby was more recognizable for the popped collar of his faded and dirty army surplus duster, or for the disapproving frown that peeked out from beneath it. The frown, he had to concede, might not be as permanently etched into the man’s wrinkles as it seemed to Duck - given that Brisby had taken to publicly disliking him ever since his early teenage years, when the old man had caught wind of the sort of hockey playing do-nothings he chose to spend time with. The duster, however, was a true constant. Rain or shine, zero degrees or a hundred. Duck, before he’d reached a level of maturity that required he begrudgingly stop himself, had once enjoyed imagining the regret the man would experience when his heavy-duty fashion choices followed him down to hell. 

These days, though, his default approach to the old asshole tended to be turning the other cheek with so much force he ended up walking in the opposite direction. In this he was not alone, as Brisby’s propensity for shameless gossiping and overt judgment made him like oil to water for anyone who wasn’t a near-literal captive audience. That was the unfortunate position Leo now found himself in, and Duck could swear - based on having known his neighbor for a decade at least - that underneath his carefully-maintained neutral expression, he was closer than he ever had been before to losing out on the last hour’s worth of sales just to close the store and get the hell out of there. 

The subject of the old man’s vitriol could be almost anything, but Duck had a sneaking suspicion it was likely to be him - given his shared acquaintanceship with the two, Brisby’s distaste for him as a person, and the general type of luck he seemed to have been struck with lately. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t remember having done anything worth telling tales about in at least a month - or, more truthfully, even in the last 20 years of his intentionally mundane life. Certain things, like coming out, tended to draw a lot more attention of both a positive and negative nature than he really thought they altogether deserved. But even so, the old man had been given a good decade and a half to cool down on that particular topic. And given how the rest of the town had adjusted comfortably into a spectrum of entirely indifferent to extremely supportive - as a great deal more of its residents had come out in the interim - he doubted the subject had the legs to motivate even a one-sided rant of such a mind-numbing length that Leo was now blatantly turning the sound back up on his television. 

However, while Duck was unable to hear the details of a conversation from 30 feet away, it seemed Indrid was not so lucky. The frown that had persisted since halfway through their earlier car ride had turned mortified and tight, and Duck was certain that beneath his raised brows and behind his glasses his eyes were as wide as a deer’s in the headlights. He briefly wondered if Indrid had ultra-sonic hearing, like the Wax Moths indigenous to his forest, but the hole in the ground his friend seemed to be trying to will into existence was of course a far more pressing issue to address. Without knowing quite what to do he made a choice he had yet to figure out how to stop himself from, despite the fact that it nearly always seemed to get him in trouble, and followed his instincts - clearing his throat loudly and dropping a nearby bag of Takis onto the floor with a crunch. This, although not the most subtle of entrances, at least served its purpose in breaking up the discussion, and two pairs of eyes - one set squinting in distrust and the other wide with relief - turned to face him. 

“Well, speak of the devil and he doth appear” said Brisby disdainfully, and Duck was no longer certain whether he was referring to himself or Indrid. Either way, he didn’t like it. 

“Not quite the devil, just a couple of guys on a quest for, uh… Hot Pockets.” Said Duck, as resolutely as he was capable of. “Although speaking of - or not speaking of, I guess. Have you two seen anything... Weird? We’re out trying to respond to a, uh, call… which was of course about… a mountain lion. No, no, sorry, a moose. Due to the antlers, obviously. So would you happen to have, uh-“ He coughed. “Would either of you happen to have seen a rabid, uh, moose around these parts? And the reason Indrid here is with me, before you ask, is that. Um. Well obviously…. WHEW…. Boy howdy is it hot in here. Spring for a better A/C, would you Leo? Jesus Louiseus….” By this point he found himself leaning desperately against a display crate full of gatorade, clutching his side as if the air itself had abandoned him. 

His performance, while first and foremost causing him to make an ass of himself, had at least had served to cheer Indrid up. The man was now looking at him - or at least, in his general direction, given the glasses always left Duck guessing a little - with a wide and highly amused smile that he made no attempt to hide from their audience. That smile was a new one, Duck realized briefly, before having the much larger realization that he wasn’t quite sure when it was that he had started cataloguing the looks his friend gave him. 

Mercifully, Indrid chose to end his own amusement by intervening, his lying skills seemingly prolific when contrasted with Duck’s own. “What my friend here is trying to say is that he received a phone call from a concerned citizen, who said she’d seen a large antlered beast nearby - which she assumed was a moose. Duck then explained to her that it was most likely an elk, since moose aren’t native to West Virginia, as he well knows.” He turned his head minutely back toward Duck, his professional tone undercut slightly by the subtle return of his earlier amused smile. “She told him that no matter what it was, she was worried about its safety, being so close to the road. And Duck, kind as ever, decided to check it out, despite the fact that his shift was ending and we had dinner plans.” 

To accent his final lie, Indrid turned fully in the direction of Mr. Brisby, a clear challenge in the single brow he raised. Though Duck, his heart still racing from the adrenaline of a small fib, hadn’t the slightest clue what it was. 

It seemed Mr. Brisby understood, though, judging by the scowl he gave them both. And without much further ado he gathered up his shopping bags and mumbled a goodbye - pointedly only to Leo - before taking a route toward the exit that allowed him such a wide berth from the two of them that Duck was momentarily worried he was going to take down the rest of the Takis with the long tail of his coat. Leo, meanwhile, was giving them a look that seemed both surprised and a little bit pleased - likely from the quick departure of Kepler’s least popular resident. 

“Well boys, you saved my life.” Leo said in his gruff but warm voice, and he didn’t seem entirely kidding. 

Duck was about to respond, when in rushed Ned and Aubrey - the former still wearing a hot chocolate mustache over his real one, and the latter wearing an expression that clearly communicated that they had better not ruin this by telling him about it. 

“I’m gonna go ahead and guess that this has nothing to do with a moose, eh Duck?” Leo continued - and Aubrey and Ned slowed their approach, looking nervous at his assertion. 

“No, guys, it’s cool.” Duck explained. “He’s a chosen one too. Or was, I think. I’m still not too clear on the specifics of it.” 

“Well, technically I think we both were, and aren’t anymore.” Said Leo morosely. “But I was a chosen one, yeah, until I got too old for the task and started keeping an eye on ol’ Duck here. I’m like a, uh… Think of me like the old man from Harry Potter. Dumbleforb, or whoever he was.” 

“Yeah, that was his name. Only in this version I’m the gay one.” Said Duck with delight. “Although actually, I don’t mean to assume, Leo. Are you straight?” 

“I’m a man of mystery, Duck.” Responded Leo with a wink. “But I don’t think that’s the most pressing matter at hand here, is it?”

“No, no it’s not.” Said Ned, his normally grandiose voice slightly dialed back, and the chocolate around his mouth framing a frown of clear exhaustion. “We got called in by our two chums here over a little bit of rain, and just when I’d found a working VCR in the basement that’ll play my old X-Files tapes. Did you know Barclay hasn’t seen the show? I tried to get him to watch an episode on Nedflix, which is what they call Netflix over on the InterNed, but-“ 

At this point Aubrey cut in, sensing an eternal tangent. “-What Ned’s getting at here is that Duck and Indrid called and asked us to come meet them here, because they were worried an attack like the one at the diner this morning might be about to happen again. You heard about that, right?” She asked, looking at Leo. 

“Yeah, yeah I did.” He replied. “I was real sorry to hear it too, she was a good kid, that Sharon. But what makes you think the abomination is coming to my store? It is an abomination, I’m assuming? That moose-elk-mountain lion stuff was just another one of your lies, right Duck?” His voice held curiosity with no accusation, which seemed fair enough given Duck’s attempts at deceit were so ineffective they were essentially harmless. 

“Yeah,” Duck admitted with a sigh, “Yeah I was fibbing on that one. And it is an abomination, as far as we can tell. Sort of human-shaped, but larger, and all disproportionate. And with a huge antler rack. It was pretty droopy, and kinda hung down, but probably at least a 350 pointer according to those Boone & Crockett assholes.” He shook his head. “I think, anyway. I saw it in a vision so it’s all a real blur. And the bigger problem is that we can’t figure out what draws it to its victims, which makes it hard to predict.” 

At the mention of predictions, Aubrey turned to Indrid, who had been so quiet she seemed almost to have forgotten he was there at all. His brow was furrowed in a way that Duck knew meant he was looking into the future - although the tension in his expression was less easy to place. 

No doubt sensing what she was about to ask him, Indrid spoke first. “No, I’m not seeing anything just yet, unfortunately. There’s a… I’m getting a bit swamped with visions of another sort that are attempting to monopolize my attention. I’m doing my best to avoid them, but that avoidance is making it hard to pin down anything that isn’t an almost certain immediate future, I’m afraid…” He trailed off, seemingly lost in a frustrating thought, before coming back to himself a bit, a sly and slightly smug look dawning across his face. “Although… speaking of soulmates, where is Dani, Aubrey?” 

Ned gave Aubrey a shocked look that quickly turned into delight, and she began to blush with such ferocity that Duck became half worried she’d actually set herself on fire. He then glanced at Indrid - and though he was facing Aubrey, Duck knew somehow that his friend was watching him out of the corner of his eye. They shared a small repressed grin in unison, and Duck aimed a teasing elbow to the ribs that he was sure the prognosticator would easily dodge, only to instead feel the surprising connection of his arm on Indrid’s stomach through what must have been seven layers of coats between them. 

After being given a moment to collect herself, Aubrey returned the high five Ned had been patiently offering, and spoke: “She’s back at the lodge helping Dr. Harris Bonkers with his nighttime routine, if you must know. He needs two lullabies before bed or he’s just not himself the next morning. Not that it’s any of your business anyway, you nosey couple of-“

“Ah… No, damn it!” Groaned Indrid suddenly, startling them all as he took off toward the door without further explanation. And after what couldn’t have been more than a confusing second-and -a-half, a deep-voiced cry of pain shot through the store from outside, crystallizing everything with the sort of grim clarity that accompanies knowing you’ve made a mistake far too late for it to be fixed. 

‘Of course.’ Thought Duck as he followed at Indrid’s heel, Beacon already taking shape in his hand. ‘Fucking of course it was going to attack outside. Stupid. Stupid.’ And he pushed the door open roughly with his shoulder, running blindly into the night. 

The streets were empty at this hour, and the dark was only sparsely interrupted by a sprinkling of streetlights and the occasional flickering of a neon sign or two accidentally left on the by underpaid employees of Kepler’s retail workforce. Duck knew, nearly from the moment that Indrid had taken off running, that they were already far too late. But he didn’t allow himself to slow down - somehow feeling that would be an admission of defeat - until he stopped altogether, right in the middle of the road, where the scene he was approaching was now close enough to be clear to him. 

Despite his deep detestation for the man, Duck was by no stretch of the imagination happy to find the prone body of Mr. Brisby, where he lay under one of the trees planted in the median that separated the flow of traffic on the main drag. The lamppost above him flickered weakly for a moment, before itself dying entirely with a quiet pop, and Duck felt his shoulders slump with something like resignation. 

The others, luckily, jumped to action. Aubrey lit a small flame in the palm of her hand, illuminating the area enough that they could look for clues in the few minutes they had before the police inevitably arrived. As empty as the streets seemed, Duck’s teenage years had taught him that there was no such thing as no witnesses, not even in a small town. Ned, meanwhile, removed an actual honest-to-god magnifying glass from his pocket, and began to search for clues - while Leo stood yards away with his hands on his hips, examining the scene as a whole with an amount of resignation that accompanied having seen just about everything before. 

As his friends more closely examined the familiar trio of long gashes that cut through Mr. Brisby’s back, ripping his signature duster nearly to shreds, Duck felt a small tug at his sleeve. He looked down slightly, just out of the corner of his eye, as if he knew that - like a spooked animal - any sudden movements might scare Indrid off. And he saw, as he had suspected, that his friend had grabbed the cuff of his ranger jacket. Just a small amount of the corner, though he was holding it with the same white-knuckled grip he had seen back at the lodge. Indrid’s fingers, in that position, were close to brushing against the cheap mountaineer’s watch that covered Duck’s soul mark, and he burned with guilt at that knowledge. But after what might have been the longest day of his life, this small action felt like more of a comfort than anything he could’ve ever imagined to ask for on his own, and to let it go seemed like a betrayal - though to whom, he wasn’t sure. Without knowing what he was doing until it was already done, Duck reached his free hand across his chest and grabbed Indrid by the forearm, holding him where he was. 

Beacon was for once silent as it hung from Duck’s grip between the two of them, useless against a foe that had already won the round. And so Duck and Indrid stood silently too, hardly daring to breathe too deeply for fear of startling the other. 

As the flashing lights of Sheriff Zeke’s police cruiser announced his imminent arrival - with what looked like half the force in tow - Duck gave Indrid’s forearm a parting squeeze, and released him. Indrid’s fingers relaxed slightly in response, enough that Duck slipped from his grasp, but they stayed in the same position for a moment as he brought his hand back to his side - no doubt cramped from the force he had been exerting - before he stretched them wide with a sense of finality and shoved them into the deep pocket of his outermost parka. 

The Sheriff seemed hardly surprised to see Aubrey, Ned, and Duck once more at the heart of trouble, although Indrid’s presence gave him a moment’s pause. Whether it was his unfamiliarity, or the carefully curated blank expression the man was now wearing - or perhaps even just the ridiculous number of coats he had piled on - there was really no knowing, but he apparently dismissed him as a non-threat after a brief amount of staring. 

Aubrey and Ned, having found nothing despite their efforts, came to say goodbye to Duck and Indrid, and they all promised each other they’d go over the clues tomorrow, sharing in the comforting lie that they thought they had anything to go on at all. And as tired as he was, Duck stayed at the scene of the crime a while longer, with some half-formed hope in mind that the police might come across a piece of evidence his friends had not. He provided a brief witness’ statement, and a promise to swing by the police station soon to sign it in an official capacity, though it seemed hardly useful given his testimony could be boiled down to “I saw nothing, because I was inside like some kind of dumbass”. Even so, he lingered long after his friends had gone, blending in with the small crowd that had gathered behind the police tape and cursing Ned for spoiling him with his ability to talk them all into places where they didn’t belong.

Luckily, Leo was still in the process of being deposed, and - whether intentionally or just as a symptom of his age - the man was giving his account in a loud voice, which meant anyone who happened to be in West Virginia at the time was well within earshot. 

“It’s like I told you,” Leo hollered, apparently getting increasingly grumpy as the minutes began to tick past the time he would’ve closed down his store and gone home to a warm apartment and a cozy pair of slippers. “Brisby came into my shop in the early evening, which is when he always came in. He bought canned soup, which is all he ever bought, because he didn’t seem like the cooking type. He came up to my register and insisted on telling me some gossip I didn’t figure was any of my business, but you know how he is. Or was, I guess I should say. I’ll miss his business, and this whole situation is real awful, but I don’t know if I can actually say I’ll miss him.” 

“What was it he was telling you about?” Asked the officer - who was clearly familiar with the victim, as Leo’s overly candid statement, which normally would’ve been suspicious to say the least, didn’t even inspire him to look up from his notepad. 

“Just gossip.” Said Leo, his tone quieting slightly. “You know, dramatic bullshit. News that isn’t news. Stuff that’s nobody’s business. You never even know if he’s telling the truth… Or knew, anyway.”

“Could you be more specific?” The policeman pressed firmly. “This may be important.” 

Leo visibly deliberated for a moment, and right as he was about to open his mouth and answer, Duck heard a frantic cough from behind him. 

It was Indrid, of course, and Duck felt a sudden wave of guilt as he realized that his bedtime was not the only one getting pushed back by his curiosity. 

“Sorry, sorry Indrid” He said. “Shit, it’s colder than I realized, I hope you’re ok. I was just thinking that-“ 

“There might be something useful we could get from this whole thing.” Indrid finished for him, his voice kind. “Yes, I know. And you’re a good man for trying Duck, although I believe I can tell you with some certainty that there’s nothing more for us to gain by being here.” 

Duck trusted Indrid’s word on the matter, and nodded silently as they turned to head in the direction of his car. He stopped, after a few steps, certain he’d heard someone say his name, but when he turned back around Leo was still deeply entrenched in his conversation with the officer interviewing him, and no one else seemed to have noticed him at all. 

 

********

Indrid’s hand still ached, ever so slightly, as he climbed into the passenger seat of Duck’s Bronco. Or perhaps “ached” was not quite the right word for it. More accurately, it burned, in the soft frictional way that rubbing your fingers across too much velvet might burn. And it tingled, in the way that seven miles straight down a bumpy dirt road with your fingers gripped tight on the steering wheel might make them tingle. But nothing about it hurt. 

He had felt that way ever since he’d let go of Duck’s jacket - and likely had even when he was holding it, though the rush of emotions he’d been sifting through at the time had turned the entire moment into a blur. Duck had held his arm though, he was certain of that. 

Perhaps even more odd, though - or at least more pressing to consider - had been the sudden return of the visions about his soulmate, which had cropped up unexpectedly inside Leo’s general store without so much as a polite note warning of their impending arrival. Luckily, he had caught the familiar signs of their approach quickly enough that he’d been able to keep the larger part of the onslaught at bay. But in exchange he had been struck, for a small moment, with the most detailed premonition about his soulmate he’d had since the day the man had been born. It hadn’t been much, and in fact it had been familiar, but it had rattled him nonetheless. In perfect detail, he had witnessed the drawing he’d made all those months ago, this time in action. His own mothlike hand, reaching desperately to catch the fingers of someone else’s, as it slipped from his grasp and possibly forever out of his limited line of sight. 

As nonspecific as hands could be, he knew that one well. It was the same one that was etched, small but perfectly detailed, above his heart. Though the palm was square and solid, and the fingers short and apparently strong, it likely would have been washed away in a world full of relatively similar ones were it not for the very specific position in which it appeared. On his chest - just as it was in his dream - it was extended, palm upward, as if asking for help. 

It was not until the later moment that he had, in his still somewhat foggy and unaware state, grabbed hold of Duck’s sleeve in an attempt to comfort him - luckily still maintaining the presence of mind not to do something more bold - that the visions battering his brain began to ebb. And with Duck’s decision to grab him back, they had left him in peace completely. 

He was - even now - so enthralled by the odd wonderfulness of this that he not only missed his prophetic warning of an impending question from Duck, he missed the question altogether. And given how nervous and embarrassed his friend now looked, stealing glances away from the road toward Indrid with a frequency that might have been unsafe were they not seemingly the only two people awake for miles, this had been a colossal mistake. 

“You can say no, you know.” Duck elaborated, seeming apologetic. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. In fact it’s totally cool, you don’t have to say anything. I’ll just drive you home-“ 

“No, no.” Indrid rushed to respond. “I mean, I don’t know what my answer is, because I didn’t hear your question. I’m sorry Duck. I was deep in thought, I guess you could say.” 

“Oh.” Duck’s face relaxed with relief, before being struck with fresh anxiety. “Well… I just asked if you would like to come over and maybe watch some shitty tv or something until we both fall asleep. It’s been a long day, but I don’t know if I want to be alone right now. Or I mean, I do, but being with you is kind of like being alone but better… Which I mean as a compliment. It’s like I don’t have to try when it’s you. Which I also mean as a compliment, I’m not saying that I don’t… Jesus, sorry, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’ll just take you home, huh.” 

Indrid was certain - were he to turn to the side-view mirror of the truck and catch a glimpse of his reflection - that the unknown expression on his face would betray far more of his thoughts than he had yet even consciously admitted to himself. It was for this reason that he let Duck ramble on nervously for as long as he had, while he attempted to school his features into something safer. Even so, he was grateful that they had left the main part of town behind for the almost total darkness of the residential areas. 

“I’d love to, Duck.” He finally managed to get out, and Duck relaxed back into his seat in inconscient relief. 

They pulled into the street parking in front of Duck’s apartment shrouded in a warm and comfortable silence, and as they approached the building itself Indrid felt a sense of ease at its familiarity. So much so, in fact, that as he absentmindedly entered the code for the front door and held it open for Duck, he forgot completely that - physically speaking - he had never been there before. Luckily, Duck hardly blinked an eye at the subtly-admitted intrusion on his privacy, instead just tipping his Ranger hat jokingly in thanks and fumbling at his keys with tired hands. 

The apartment itself was just as Indrid had seen it, but the act of actually being present there somehow made everything so much… more. 

There - now on the far side of the coat hanger - was Duck’s favorite gold and blue denim jacket. Which he could touch if he wanted to, and finally find out if it was as soft as he’d imagined. 

There - hung above the backsplash of the sink - were the framed posters of several national parks that had caught his eye before. Bryce Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone… Which he could now examine more closely, to see that at the bottom corner of each was a written message: “Love ya, -Juno” and a different year on each. 

There - curled up contentedly by a mismatched record collection - was Nemo the cat. Whom he could pet and play with, if the animal was willing. 

There, also, were the records themselves, which had been a source of interest to Indrid ever since he’d once seen Duck listen to vinyl renditions of Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate To The Wind” and Jimmy Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise” back to back during a single afternoon, without even a hint of irony or genre whiplash. Having a record player these days seemed to be a statement in itself, though Duck hardly seemed the type to collect vinyls just for the sake of being seen doing it, as was so en vogue. And a subtle amount of snooping proved Indrid was right in thinking that his friend may not even be aware that his behavior had looped back around from being an obsolete preference to once again being trendy. The cardboard envelopes of the albums he sifted through were eclectic and dog-eared with use, the only first pressings and original releases among them being records Duck had actually bought as new and let age with him. And there seemed to be no discernible organization to any of it, Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” being stored directly next to Bee Gee’s “1st”, but Indrid knew Duck better than to think he didn’t have a system to it - likely one that only made sense to him. And so he took care to replace each album in the exact spot he found it. 

He had become so entranced with this oddly personal insight into his friend’s inner world that he’d failed to notice the man leaving the room and coming back, until he was right behind him, a mug of hot cocoa in each hand.

“Don’t worry, made yours with egg nog.” Duck said with a warm grin. “Don’t make fun of me, I know most people are only listening to CDs now. Or I’ll bet you can even get music online these days, huh? But that’s how my dad first introduced me to all my favorite music, so I’ve sort of stuck with it.” 

Indrid accepted the hot drink, not sure if it was safe for him to consume right now when it already felt like something inside him was melting. Duck’s small-town cluelessness about the ways of the world at large was endearing, and after a full day of repressing feelings he was no longer able to ignore the fact that he was ignoring, it was for some reason that small quirk that was pushing him painfully close to the edge of a realization. 

Duck, meanwhile, seemed not to expect an answer out of Indrid, and let him sit there lost in thought while he began to rifle through the collection of vinyls himself. 

“In here somewhere there should be… ah, here she is! Check this one out.” He said, as he removed a blue-toned album titled ‘Love For Sale’. “I got this one pretty recently, and it’s real good. The singer is this lady named Kathleen Saadat… hope I’m pronouncing that right… She was a lesbian activist back in the 70’s, and now she actually is 70, and she released her first ever album. Her voice is amazing, I don’t really know much about the technical parts of all that, but it’s so smooth and real nice to listen to. Here, I’ll show you.” And he went about excitedly removing the vinyl currently sitting in the tray - carefully returning it to its beat up case - before putting the record on. 

The breathy whir and scratch of the needle was soon after followed by the soft sounds of jazz instrumentals, seeming to fill the room despite the low volume Duck was wise enough to be using at such a late hour. And the comforting effect was such that even Nemo, half asleep, stretched and snuggled into his curled up position just a bit more, and Indrid finally took a sip of his hot chocolate. It was perfect, all of it. 

Duck smiled at him softly, before seeming to be struck with an idea. 

“Oh!” He said. “Wait here.” 

And he left Indrid alone for a moment, while the beautiful voice of Ms. Saadat passed through shitty secondhand speakers. 

He was not gone long, and when he returned he had a small space heater with him, which he plugged into the wall and arranged so that it was sitting in the empty fireplace. 

“There,” he said, clearly amused at his own little joke, “now you can take off your coats.” 

So Indrid did, the huge quantity of them nearly overwhelming Duck’s coat rack, burying his favorite jacket entirely. Now assured that his guest was comfortable, Duck moved to sit on the couch, settling comfortably into a divot in the cushions that had likely been carved out after years of repetitive reclining. And Indrid - for once willing to let himself do what he wanted, rather than what he should - sat down dangerously close next to him. 

Duck didn’t seem to mind, though, in fact he slumped in earnest now. As if the few times he’d shown his tiredness that day had only been in an attempt to stave off the greater exhaustion he was now willing to let Indrid see. His head was cocked sideways, resting against a dip in the cushion behind him, and Indrid noticed with a flutter of nervousness that only a few inches and some old faded chenille were what separated his friend’s head from laying on his shoulder. 

“Not my favorite day.” Said Duck quietly, his voice slow with exhaustion. “Breakfast with you was kinda nice though.” 

Indrid breathed shallowly, the butterflies in his stomach not allowing much room for a real lungful. “Yes… I agree, on both counts. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, in fact. The breakfast, not the rest of it.” 

Duck hummed in agreement, his eyes having already slipped closed at some point. 

“Here,” Indrid said, “you’d better… you ought to take your shoes off, before you fall asleep in them.” 

Duck, clearly forgetting that he was wearing ankle-high hiking boots, attempted to toe them off - frowning and grunting with frustration when he was unsuccessful, though his tired eyes remained shuttered at a quarter-mast. Indrid gave a put-upon sigh, more for Duck’s benefit than to express any emotion he actually felt, and leaned over to gently untie the laces. They were still done up tight, looped dutifully through the last few lacehooks the way so few regular boot-wearers ever bothered to do. He fumbled for a moment with the double-knotting, but received a grunt of appreciation when he removed the first shoe, and then the other. And when he leaned back into the couch, slipping his own beat up runners off with ease and resting his feet on the mismatched ottoman in front of them, Duck mustered the energy to lift his legs up too, laying them close by. Indrid watched, entranced, as his friend smiled, and briefly but affectionately bumped their toes together, the socks on his feet and the two woolen pairs on Indrid’s own somehow still not entirely masking the warmth between them. 

“Thanks Indrid.” Duck said, his delivery more mumble than English. And his breaths slowed down, lazily, at first, and then somehow all at once, as he drifted off to sleep. 

“Any time, Duck.” Indrid responded anyway. 

The refrain of a new song began to play from the corner of the room, a slow piano line drifting through the air to meet them, and as it did Indrid finally allowed himself to feel. All the thoughts he’d stopped himself from having, not just that day but perhaps for as long as he’d known Duck, seemed to welcome him with open arms. And he hated himself for how easily he fell into them. 

It was obvious now, though. The way he felt about Duck. He had, for so long, assumed that the feelings he’d been experiencing were entirely those of friendship, and that the intensity there was due to how starved he was for them. He hadn’t questioned, at the time, that he didn’t feel quite the same way about Aubrey and Ned. Not that he didn’t love them deeply - which he might as well admit while he was allowing his heart to open up and make itself vulnerable - but that love was so wholly different. The way he felt about Duck was an emotion he wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt before, in all his centuries of living. In fact it wasn’t a single feeling at all, really, but rather the combination of every moment that had been made better because Duck was in it. He loved him in the way that hot chocolate with eggnog tasted better when he was around. He loved him in the way that times of crisis seemed a little more manageable when they were side by side. He loved him in the way that a phone call could be about nothing and still never feel dull. He loved him in the way that now, sitting on the couch and doing nothing in particular, might be the happiest he had ever felt at all. 

And as Duck’s head slipped - inevitably - off of the cushion and became cradled in his shoulder, Indrid allowed himself to pull his friend closer, just for the night. 

Because that was just it, that was the problem. The feeling of being in love, and of being in love so close to Duck, was so uncomplicatedly wonderful he could hardly convince himself to fight it. But he had to, for both their sakes. It wasn’t right of him to go down this path when he knew he had a soulmate in someone else. Even were he to convince Duck to give him a chance, and they were to live in this apartment together, and share in a quiet breakfast every morning, and spend every night just like this… There was every possibility that he would go out for eggs one day, so Duck could have his French toast, and run into a random stranger in the checkout line that would ruin the whole thing for the both of them. It was not that he could ever imagine loving someone as much as he loved Duck, even if he was fated to. Nor could he imagine wanting to spend his life with anyone else, no matter what the universe had to say about it. But he had feared the idea of his soulmate for the majority of his adult life for good reason. Because he had no idea what predestined love on a cosmic scale felt like, and he had no idea what it might turn him into. 

And even worse was the fact that - setting his own deep trepidation aside - there was the far greater matter of Duck having a soulmate himself. A fact that bore down on him like a train hurtling down a railroad track he for some reason couldn’t stand to leave. He knew that he wasn’t going to allow his uncontrollable heart keep him from the friendship they had built, but an extended friendship with Duck meant that someday, at some point, he would almost certainly be introduced to his soulmate. The very thought of which felt almost unbearable. He couldn’t imagine what sort of man it would be, and he had to fight off the fledgling tendrils of jealousy to instead hope that whoever he was, he was everything Duck deserved. He hoped that the man loved Duck as much as he did, and that he understood him without trying to change him, and that he made him happy in all the ways Indrid couldn’t allow himself. 

Just then, Duck sighed in his sleep, nuzzling against his shoulder unconsciously. And Indrid reached a hand up - slowly and painfully - to stroke through his hair, as softly as he dared. 

The voice from the record player gently wafted through the air. 

“Every time we say goodbye, I die a little.” She said. “Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little. Why the gods above me, who must be in the know... Think so little of me, they’d allow you to go.” 

And with that sentiment in his mind, Indrid buried his fingers into Duck’s hair more firmly, leaning to rest his own head against the man he loved - luckily still not waking him - as he became suddenly overwhelmed by how complicated he had made his feelings by choosing to no longer ignore them. He felt in equal parts overjoyed with the feeling of love itself, and how he knew that Duck - in his own and different way - loved him too. That he could spend time with Duck with as much ease as it took to make a phone call, and that they could still have moments just like this, without having to make it anything more. Because just this much alone was beautiful. 

But - despite his guilt at the greediness of it - he equally felt the pain of knowing that he was, somehow, one half of a whole he had never even wanted. And that Duck, similarly and despite his feelings, had never been meant for him. 

And so he sat, long into the night, his heart filling and breaking in endless repetition.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've tagged for canon-typical violence, of course, but just as an extra warning: the beginning of this chapter contains a significant amount of animal death.

Sheriff Zeke had never been a hunter. He had - on occasion, and usually only to impress a girl - gone on a handful of trips with his college buddies, but he had never really understood the odd thrill the others seemed to get out of it. He’d bagged his turkeys, and one or two deer, with the mindset that they were the necessary foreplay that lead to the much more rewarding conclusion of getting drunk around a campfire. And even though the actual death of an animal didn’t quite bother him as much as it did other people (his son for example), he’d found that those of his friends who were most enthusiastic about the process were the same ones he soon enough found so distasteful in other aspects he’d eventually stop answering their calls. 

It wasn’t, it should be mentioned, that he didn’t care for animals at all. He had a roostful of chickens at home of whom he was quite fond, and a pair of dogs he’d move mountains for. But as a child he had lived at the edge of town - back when Kepler had been so small it was really only a single street, the focal point of which had been a 7/11. And this had meant that he’d split the bulk of his growing up between the small farm his family owned and the woods just beyond it, both of which had provided plenty of opportunities to normalize the concept in his fermenting young brain that death was just a natural part of living. 

Even these days, he likely saw an animal carcass on the side of the road with the daily frequency he imagined city-dwelling folks saw those dancing sign holders - the ones who dressed as the statue of liberty or a hot dog, like he’d once seen years ago when he and his dad had driven all day to catch a Phillies ball game… But when it came to actually hunting? By the time he’d reached a point in his life where he was financially capable of investing the kind of money into a hobby that it would’ve required, he’d also reached a level of self-awareness to know that personally - despite the inevitability there was in the death of all things - when given a gun all locked and loaded he’d just as soon let the poor creature live.

All this to say that he was no stranger to death in any form it chose to appear, but what he saw in the forest that morning was stomach-turning in a sense so deeply unlike death that it gave the impression the element of life had never been involved in the equation at all. 

The call had come in at around 8:10 in the morning. He knew that for sure because he’d only just arrived for his shift when it had, and ever since he’d gotten married he’d made a strict habit of running 10 minutes late to everything. Janet, the department’s one and only dispatcher (who had surely been around as long as the concept of organized law enforcement, and may even have invented it given her attitude), had cast a searching gaze through the bare bones early morning staffing at the station, before pressing her arthritic finger to the line directly routed to the sheriff’s desk with the sort of finality typically reserved for an executioner operating the electric chair. 

Zeke had sighed, resigned to his fate, and abandoned the steaming hot cup of coffee he’d only just settled down to enjoy in favor of what he was certain would be another morning of rousting smoked-out teens away from the more popular tourist trails. Not for the first time, he was struck by just how grateful he was that Calvin had a good head on his shoulders. His kid had never been the type to goof off like that, always working hard and trying to do right by the community. And he had a good heart, the kind that worried Zeke a bit. Caring so much could make you vulnerable, and it was a dangerous world out there, even in Kepler. Perhaps especially in Kepler, lately. 

Had he known what he was about to walk into, he might have done things a bit differently. It’s possible he would’ve finished the cup of coffee before he left, allowing himself just one more moment of peace before his day went to shit. He almost certainly would’ve brought more backup. Not that the scene itself required the heavy hand of the law bearing down on it - it was just a mess of dead deer after all. But somehow he felt that just having a few more opinions might have been helpful. A handy metric for whether he was justified in feeling as bone deep disturbed by the whole thing as he was. 

Because that’s all it was, really. A true mess of dead deer. The call had been brief and slightly annoying, the person on the other end of the line clearly a young man suffering from the kind of paranoia that accompanies having too much weed on hand without enough knowledge of your limits. And the sheriff might have ignored it altogether - given that thinking you heard something unsettling in the woods was hardly cause for alarm, as any resident of the town should well know. But beneath the pot-induced superficial stupidity of the caller, and through all his unwillingness to share anything more than a vague location, Zeke had heard the familiar sound of a kid who was well and truly scared. And he couldn’t just ignore that. 

Luckily, he’d had the good sense to tell Janet to phone up the Parks Department on his way out, as the place he was headed was right in that jurisdictional grey zone where Kepler’s commonplace tree growth turned suddenly into protected national forest. So it was at least with the knowledge that a ranger was on their way to offer support that he walked blindly into the grisly scene. 

What was perhaps most odd about the whole thing was that there was no apparent reason for it at all. In his line of work, Zeke had developed the hair-trigger instinct to read every situation he entered. And it had been his experience that even if the thread he followed ended up being the wrong one, it was having a theory at all that offered up the most opportunities for understanding. But the brutal melee that spread itself out before him as he cleared a particularly dense thicket and entered the grove was not the sort of work he’d expect of a mere bear or cougar, or even the nastiest of humans. It appeared as though a small family of deer had stopped there to graze, only to be attacked by… something. The predator was unclear, as no tracks were obvious among the lush grass - still wet from a recent drizzle of rain. But it had certainly been a messy ordeal, like the devil himself had recently decided to stop by the MoMA and found great inspiration in Jackson Pollock. 

Aside from the sweeping grimness of the scene, Zeke’s trained eye was drawn to something more specific. Three large slashes, running across what appeared to be a section of a torso - most likely belonging to the largest buck, the rest of whom was for the most part dangling from one of the overhanging branches on the opposite end of the clearing. Those three punctures were unlike the rest, which were random and frequent, in that they were nearly perfectly straight and nearly perfectly even. And they were certainly deep enough that they would’ve killed your average animal almost at the first touch. But this was clearly not the case this time around, as evidenced by the fact that they jagged suddenly and sharply to the right - just for an inch or two at the end, where they tapered off. As if the attacker had been suddenly surprised. 

A low whistle came from behind him, and Zeke whipped around - a jumpy hand reaching for his holster - before realizing that the entity approaching him now was perhaps the least threatening one he’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. Duck Newton picked a path through the grot and debris with ginger care, his thumbs tucked in the loops of that odd belt he insisted on wearing, and the sheriff wondered at how he of all people seemed to always end up on the ass end of trouble. Even now, with all the other rangers in the Parks Department’s employ, he should have known that the only person who could possibly answer his call for backup - based on probability alone - was Duck. 

“Howdy there, Duck.” Zeke called out, unsure just what sort of tone was appropriate for the setting they found themselves in. 

“Hey Sheriff.” Duck responded, with what felt like equal trepidation. “What, uh… What have we got here, exactly?” 

“Well if I’m honest with you here Ranger Newton, I don’t rightly know.” Zeke said, and he noted with interest that while Duck certainly seemed upset - and possibly a bit ill - the man wasn’t nearly as shocked as he might’ve expected. “It seems to me that the poor animals were ambushed by something… Or maybe someone, there’s no telling just yet. But for the life of me, I’m having the darndest time figuring out why. It’s hard to tell, but I’m fairly certain there’s enough meat here that…. Well, what I’m trying to say is: if this was a creature, it wasn’t hungry.” 

“Yeah,” said Duck, surveying the scene through slightly squinted eyes, as if taking it all in with them wide open was a bit much to ask. “Not hungry for anything physical, anyway.” 

It was an offhand remark, likely made without thinking, but it was one Sheriff Zeke immediately filed away to examine later. And he wondered just when it was that so many of the members of his town had stopped making any damn sense. 

Unable to come up with a suitable response, he instead wandered out of the grove and toward the nearest trail a few hundred yards away, in the hopes that his mysterious caller was as dumb as he’d come off. And sure enough, a few paces back into the thicket and to the left, just next to a fallen black birch, he found the telltale signs of a teen hangout - including a crumpled can of Jasta, and the tail end of a blunt. 

“Ah man,” came Duck’s deeply annoyed voice from behind him, evidently having followed him through the forest so adeptly that the sheriff hadn’t even noticed. “Dumb fucking kids. You can’t just drop the roach, especially in the woods! The ground is practically made of tinder, even when it’s still damp like this. It’s like nobody even listens to Smokey the fucking Bear anymore.” 

Zeke nodded, silently filing away Duck’s knowledge of drug lingo and his surprising stealth before he responded. “Well, as far as I can see it, here’s what we’ve got to go on: A bunch of stupid teenagers are out smoking in the woods before school. I’ve got a short list of suspects on that aspect of it already, although I’m not sure that’s really our biggest problem here….” He looked to Ranger Newton, who nodded in agreement. “Alright then. If I catch them I’ll be sure to give you a chance to give the fire safety lecture as well. Anyhow, while they’re out here sluffing class they hear a noise, which they did not describe to me beyond the fact that it ‘creeped them the hell out’. They call the station and then flee the scene, leaving behind evidence of their lawbreaking. Meanwhile, only a few yards away an entire family of deer is slaughtered by something that - as far as I can tell - we are clueless about. Am I missing anything here? Because from where I’m standing, this has got the makings of a real bad situation.” 

“Yeah, actually, there is one thing.” Said Duck, for his part having gone suddenly a bit quiet. “You saw those three claw marks going through that chunk of… Jesus, I think it was the stag, but who can tell now. Well, to me they look an awful lot like what we saw on Sharon and Brisby, don’t you think?” 

Zeke had to admit the man seemed to be onto something there, although the implications his suggestion held did little but make the situation seem even more bleak. 

“You think…” The sheriff started tentatively. “Are you suggesting that we might have a serial killer on our hands? Some kind of murdering psychopath, right here in Kepler? Duck, this town has a population that can’t even manage to break ten thousand. Who’s your suspect? Is it Mrs. Pearson? Is it Anurag from the deli? Everyone knows everyone around here, so you tell me which of your neighbors could possibly have done a thing like this.” 

Duck raised his hands defensively, eyes now wide. “No, no! I don’t mean anything like that. It’s just that… I don’t know what I meant to say, I’m not sure why I brought it up to you to be honest. Just keep an eye out, would you? There’s dark stuff going around.” And at this he looked pensive, which only served to remind Zeke of the constant stress he felt at the knowledge that a solid amount of the fighting between good and evil in this town seemed to be happening right under his nose. 

In fact, it was enough to almost make him ask. After having inherited the weirdness of the town he loved so much when he’d chosen to take up the mantle as its sheriff, he’d made a decisive effort to keep it at bay as much as possible - always assuming that what was known to be good could be counted on to stay that way, and what was known to be odd couldn’t be counted on for anything at all. But the longer he did his job, the more he felt that - much like the ground he now stood on - the lines he used to draw in the sand were instead just irrelevant chicken scratch in an unknowably vast grey area. Good was only good as often as it wanted to be, and bad was often capable of being much worse, were it not under the impression it was doing what was right. It was a confusing slurry of incompatible concepts, and lately it had seemed that the only thing he could rely on was his own Sisyphean efforts to maintain order. So if there was truly something deeper at play here - if, God forbid, the nonsense Ned fucking Chicane had re-energized in the town had grown from a kernel of truth - then was it his civic responsibility to accept and address that? Was he even capable? 

“Duck, I was wondering-“ he began, but Duck interrupted him, apparently not having noticed the sheriff’s silent existential crisis while being too wrapped up in his own. 

“We should get animal control out here, huh?” The ranger said, chewing on his bottom lip, still deep in thought. “This is a bit much to just let nature run its course with the remains, and we’re going to attract a bear or something real soon if we don’t get it cleaned up. We’re way too close to the trails for my liking.” 

Zeke nodded in agreement, his opportunity having passed, and they both shared a look that said they pitied the poor sucker who had to come clean up a scene that wouldn’t be so easily erased from either of their minds for quite some time. 

 

*************** 

The day had not begun pleasantly, for Duck. Or actually, in certain ways it had been about as perfect as he could’ve dared hope. But before it’d had the chance to become nice and then wonderful and then a tad disturbing, it had begun with a rather distressing dream. 

Or perhaps it was a vision. This one had been difficult to tell, as it had lasted only the briefest of moments. He’d spent the majority of his unconscious night imagining that he felt the comfort of cool fingers running through his hair, occasionally trailing down his neck and then further down his arm to rest briefly and excruciatingly lightly on his hand, before retreating once more to draw delicate patterns on his scalp. This dream - though not particularly story-oriented or linear - had been divinely restful, which was just what he’d been needing. 

After a while of this, however, it had stopped abruptly, and its place had been taken by a short but upsetting visual. He’d seen his own hand reaching futilely up toward the sky, and felt the searing panic of nothing but open air at his back. And then he’d seen Indrid - his mothlike form formidable enough to take over his line of sight almost completely - as his friend beat his wings against the winds with a frantic pattern in an attempt to catch Duck’s hand in his own. But try as he might, and desperate as he’d seemed, they’d slipped further and further away from each other. 

That alone was enough to jolt him violently from his sleep, his surroundings confusing and frightening him for a moment before he realized that he was fine. He was fine… He was at home on his couch, with a grumpy Nemo on his one side, and a concerned and decidedly human-shaped Indrid at his other. And it occurred to him in the back of his mind, as he tried to regulate his breathing and regain control over the adrenaline coursing uselessly through his limbs, that the hand that now rested motionless and reassuring on the center of his chest so near his heart was just as nice as he’d dreamed it to be. 

He rocked minutely forward and back with each breath, the repetitive motion reminding him that he was physically there and perfectly ok, and Indrid’s hand remained firmly where it was, following his movements without question. 

After Duck’s gasping breaths turned to longer inhales, and the shakiness of them had finally passed, Indrid’s reassuring mantra of “it’s fine Duck, you’re fine, I am here, Nemo is here, it’s ok Duck, you’re fine…” had faded, leaving behind only the question he seemed too kind to actually voice out loud. 

“It was just a nightmare.” Duck answered anyway. “Or maybe it wasn’t. It was… It’s not important. I think what was worst about it was just that it felt so familiar, but I don’t really know from where.” 

He wasn’t exactly sure what it was that stopped him from telling Indrid the whole story. But it seemed to Duck that if it was only a dream after all, he didn’t want to give Indrid the idea that his subconscious didn’t trust him. Because even if he wasn’t quite as in touch with his inner voice as he might have been had he gone to more than just one free yoga class, there was no way in hell that that was true. He’d trust Indrid with anything, given half the chance. 

And - of course - alternatively, were it not in fact a dream, but instead a premonition… There was no use letting his friend beat himself up over a future he seemed helpless to prevent. Not before he’d probably end up seeing it coming himself, anyway. 

Luckily, Indrid didn’t push him for more information, instead just sitting with him silently for a moment before finally removing his hand, standing up slowly and tiredly but still without warning and heading for the kitchen. Duck wondered at the sudden change of direction in the moment they’d been sharing, but didn’t have long to before his stomach growled ferociously, and the snicker he heard from inside the fridge - where Indrid was now elbows deep in search of something or another - gave him all the answer he needed. 

Breakfast came together as naturally as if they’d been practicing the routine for years, and perhaps that was due to Indrid’s ability of foresight, but Duck couldn’t help being a bit touched by the feeling of it anyway. His friend had also blessedly kept the conversation largely one-sided, monologuing about this or that while he prepared two separate egg washes - one with nog, one with milk. And despite the fact that Duck had already broken his morning communication dam almost the moment he’d woken up, he’d recognized and appreciated the gesture. In fact, it even seemed as if Indrid - with every subject he brought up - was looking a bit ahead to the universes in which Duck did respond, and was incorporating his input so that he didn’t have to. 

“Nemo won’t stop giving me those eyes.” He said, yawning a tad and stretching in a way that made his undershirt ride up his hips slightly. “I know, I won’t feed him, the vet was right that he’s getting a bit tubby. But he’s so good at begging I think he might be part dog… No, no, don’t make the poor boy leave. It’s my own fault for being such a sucker.” 

And Duck’s heart was as full as it’d ever been, in that moment. 

While Indrid had focused his efforts on the French toast, Duck had busied himself first with making their coffee, and then by laying out much more finger food than he typically would’ve bothered with for himself. And despite the fact that his kitchen table had been designed for two and purchased for one, he managed to fit an assortment of grapes, strawberries, cantaloupe, granola, and both eggnog and orange juice on there with only a mild amount of concern that something would end up tumbling off the edge. None of it was for him, though he’d likely end up eating a good amount of it anyway. It was just that Indrid was as close to realizing that old descriptor of ‘skin and bones’ as anyone Duck had ever met - and he always had been, at least as long as they’d known each other. But Duck would be damned if he wasn’t going to try and force some nutrients on him now that he was given the chance. 

“That’s quite the feast you’ve set up here, Duck” said Indrid with a smile that suggested he knew exactly what he was up to. Luckily, he didn’t seem offended in the slightest, instead just adeptly making room for a plate stacked high with French toast - the quantity of which almost making up for their apparent lack in quality. 

“Couldn’t see those burns coming, huh?” Teased Duck - his tone still good-natured, especially given that it seemed it was mostly Indrid’s eggnog variations that had suffered. 

Indrid blushed, turning away so sharply Duck caught a glimpse of the corner of his eye in the gap behind his ever-present sunglasses. But he hardly had the time to notice this small invasion of his friend’s privacy, as it felt, given that a curiously sad note had played across his face.

“Sorry,” Indrid said, a tad muted, “I was distracted, by, well…. You’ve got a great deal more poetry on your bookshelf than I might have assumed.” 

The change in subject seemed less of an explanation than it did an attempt to avoid the direction it had been heading, and so Duck followed it unquestioningly, willing to take a hint. “Yeah, I love poetry as long as it’s the right stuff.” He explained, abandoning their breakfast briefly to go over to the bookshelf Indrid was looking at so curiously. “I’ve got… let’s see. Yeah, I’ve got some Walt Whitman, obviously. Some Robert Frost, cause of the whole nature thing. Oh, and Cavafy, you know him?” 

Indrid shook his head. 

“Well that’s ok,” said Duck, “neither did I until Jane went off for her Master’s and one of her professors introduced her. I don’t know much about writing and all that, but I really like the way he does it. It’s very honest and doesn’t get too… flowery, I guess? Which makes it feel more genuine to me. But it’s also always kind of like you’re watching him watch a play, rather than him trying to convince you you’re in one. I don’t really know what I’m saying. This is all Jane’s purview, I’m just the forest guy. Here, let me read you one, I’ll just show you.” 

Ever since his sister had first read it to him over the phone, all filled with excitement at this new great work she’d never seen before, his favorite poem of Cavafy’s had been one titled ‘An Old Man’. But suddenly now, almost as if it had happened overnight, he found that that had changed, and an entirely new one came to mind. 

“Let me just…” He mumbled as he sifted through the pages, unfamiliar with the location of the piece he was seeking. “Ah, here it is….   
“‘On hearing of strong love, tremble and be moved  
like an aesthete.   
But remember all those loves your fantasies created for you;  
remember these first, then the others - the less great,  
the more real and tangible, which you experienced and   
enjoyed.  
You were not denied such loves.’” 

He let the last sentence hang in the air for a moment, before finally looking away from the page to see that his attempt to distract his friend could not have gone more awry, as Indrid now looked nothing short of devastated. Duck took in his changed expression with alarm, having no clue at all what it was he’d done to upset him, but desperate to make it better. 

“Sorry, I don’t know if poetry is your thing.” He rushed to amend, wondering if perhaps even just the mention of romance was distasteful to Indrid, reminding him of the soulmate he cared for so little. “It’s also translated from Greek, I think, so maybe it’s better the original way? I, uh… Are you ok?” 

Indrid seemed to come back to himself, then, and whatever it was that was causing him pain was apparently pushed to the side in favor of a neutral expression. His tone, however, was joking when he responded. “I am fine, Duck. Although I have to say, I didn’t expect you to be such a sensitive soul.” 

“Ah shut up,” Duck said, latching on to the chance to reintroduce some levity to their conversation, “I’ve got fucking layers man. Like how I’ve always got mints on me. But everyone always wants to talk about how I’m the Chosen One. No one ever asks if I’ve got a mint, or what my favorite poems are. I’m large, I contain multitudes! See? That was Walt Whitman…” 

He trailed off there, glad to see that Indrid was smiling again, and even laughing softly. And considering the murky waters finally avoided he rejoined his friend at the breakfast table, where the French toast was starting to cool. 

They wordlessly piled their plates high with as much food would fit, and Indrid paused in pouring his syrup entirely just to watch as Duck took his first bite. 

“Not so bad, eh?” He asked smugly, almost as soon as the fork entered Duck’s mouth. But damn if he wasn’t right. 

“Fine, I’ll give it to you.” Duck conceded, with as much smile as he could manage through a mouthful of food. He had no doubt he was being a bit disgusting, and his mom would’ve been horrified at his table manners, but he couldn’t help himself. “These are delicious. I guess burning your food to shit is some new culinary thing I haven’t heard about.” 

Indrid’s naturally wide smile stretched to what on anyone else would’ve been a breaking point, and he kicked Duck’s leg lightly under the table in response. 

They finished their breakfast together as uneventfully as either could have hoped for, the silence they shared standing as a testament to how good the food truly was. And Duck realized that - what with the Nostalgia Diner being closed for the foreseeable future - this was about as good a second option as he’d ever get. So much so that he almost considered asking Indrid to join him the next morning too, despite how odd and inconvenient he imagined the request would sound. 

They were just in the process of clearing their plates - joking about this or that and keeping a careful eye on Nemo to make sure he didn’t have a chance at any leftovers - when Indrid gasped softly and stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth going slack in the way Duck knew meant he was seeing the future. He wanted to ask what was wrong, and whether he could help, but he imagined an interruption - were it something important - would be more of a hindrance than anything else. So he instead bit his tongue, carefully removing the syrupy plate from Indrid’s loose grip and running it under the sink. 

It only took a moment for Indrid to return to the present, as it turned out. Not even long enough for him to avoid the dishes entirely. 

“I’m very sorry Duck.” He said somewhat abruptly, his voice cutting firmly through the silence. “You’re about to get called in on something a little bit horrifying.” 

And sure enough, the phone began to ring. 

The rest of the morning that followed was not nearly as lovely as the hour leading up to it had ended up being. In fact, were it not for Indrid’s warning about what he was going to witness, the scene Duck was sent to handle would’ve been downright upsetting in a day-ruining sort of way. As it was, it was hardly easy to handle, and he had ended up staying there for quite some time - babysitting Animal Control’s ineffectual attempts at competent work - which had hardly helped. Luckily, despite the headache it gave him, this had allowed him a while to think about just what it was the Pine Guard was dealing with, and what on earth it could be that they were missing. 

It had occurred to him earlier, when Sheriff Zeke had mentioned how odd it all was for an animal attack, that perhaps he’d been thinking about the abominations in the wrong frame of mind. Because he’d been associating them with Sylvain, and because his friends from Sylvain had come in all shapes and sizes, he had - without realizing it - been attributing a level of intelligence to its more unsavory creatures that they perhaps did not deserve. Not in the sense that they might be able to pass an AP Calculus test without studying properly, but rather that the attacks might not be as premeditated and intentional as he’d always thought. And this breakthrough, though it seemed obvious in retrospect, did quite a bit in narrowing down the questions they had about the monster they were now facing. 

Because if it was just like an animal, it attacked on instinct, and its instincts were driven by hunger. So the only real question was: what was it hungry for? 

This point itself was still an unfortunately big one, and it seemed a tad unknowable, but at the very least it straightened out a lot of the painful ‘What Ifs’ that had been looping through his mind in the last 24 hours. 

It wasn’t until lunch rolled around that he was finally able to leave the grove behind, although the stench of freshly-rained-on death seemed to follow him all the way to his car. He had finally put the A/C on full blast out of sheer desperation, but the cold chill of it reminded him of the way Indrid’s hand had felt on his chest that morning, and - unwilling to think about it too much, for fear that overthinking would ruin it - he’d eventually rolled down the windows instead. 

He pulled up to the police station like that, the amount of open air flowing through the cab of his truck doing nothing to mask just how loudly he’d been blasting ‘Boy Problems’, and an off-duty officer who was grabbing a bite to eat on the bench outside had laughed a bit at hearing it. Duck just gave a good-natured wave in response, jogging to the doors with true excitement to finally enter the blissful refrigeration-levels of cooling the station always had. At least someone around here was getting a significant amount of their tax dollars… 

The department was at a low bustling hum as it always was this time of day, but Janet’s normally stony face had still broken into a wrinkled smile at seeing his entrance, and he’d tipped his ranger hat to her with a smile of his own in response. The older ladies of Kepler all famously had a soft spot for Duck - which he’d always attributed to his chubby pinchable cheeks, though Juno loved to tease that it was because he was the last person in the 21st century to still use the word “ma’am”.

“How’re you doing on this fine day, Duck?” Janet called over, allowing the call-holding light to flash in a way that slightly worried him. 

“Just fine, ma’am.” He hollered back, approaching her desk resigned to the fact that he was going to be roped into a conversation. “Yourself?” 

“Oh just fine, just fine.” She said, with a worrying twinkle in her eye. “Certainly better now that you’re here, that’s for sure. If you ever have a free second, don’t hesitate to drop by here sometime and give these boys a lesson on manners.” At this she looked pointedly at Sheriff Zeke, who had begun to approach to speak with Duck himself, and who - though he was too far away to have heard what she said - rolled his eyes reflexively, as if aware it wasn’t likely to have been good. 

Janet looked at Duck conspiratorially then, checking that the sheriff was still a ways off across the bullpen before continuing in a low whisper. “You know, Ranger Newton, people around here have been talking about that Mr. Brisby’s death. Not sure I can say I’ll miss him. He was terrible at Bridge, and a real poor sport about it too. But there’s other things they’ve been saying…” She leaned forward now, as if both excited and protective of her next words. “Now, you didn’t hear this from me, given how illegal it is to gossip about a witness’ testimony and whatnot. But apparently in Leo’s statement last night he mentioned that Brisby had been trying to spread chitchat about you and some man. He told Mr. Tarkesian that he’d seen you two sharing breakfast yesterday, and that it was clear that you were…. Well, ‘dating’ is probably the more polite way of putting it.” 

Duck felt his face grow hot, which was not at all convenient given how shrewdly and unabashedly Janet was studying his expression.

“Now obviously Leo didn’t have any interest in entertaining Brisby’s nonsense,” she continued, almost seeming to enjoy his discomfort, “and I’ve been telling people myself that there’s certainly no way it’s true. If Duck Newton had a new beau I’d know about it, I said. Mrs. Pearson is his neighbor and a dear friend, and she hasn’t told me anything of the sort. And besides, you’d just have told me about it yourself, I’m sure.” 

Duck had by this point lost his ability for semantic thought almost entirely - a fact he found deeply annoying given this sort of stupefaction used to only be reserved for lying - and was only just saved by the timely approach of Sheriff Zeke, who regarded Janet’s smug face and Duck’s deeply red one with no small amount of clear suspicion. 

“Alright, Janet, let the poor fella go.” He interrupted gruffly, looping his thumbs just above his belt buckle in a way few other people could pull off as being truly authoritative. “And what have I told you about letting the line ring? It could be a real emergency for once, you never know these days.” 

“Ignore him, Duck, he thinks he runs this place.” Said Janet - seemingly with no amount of irony, although she still followed his directive and made to finally answer the call, effectively freeing Duck at long last. 

Sheriff Zeke gestured to indicate that he follow him, and walked into an empty conference room, shutting the door behind them. 

“Don’t mind her,” he said with finality, “that damn Bridge group of hers gossips enough for three Brisbys at least, and everyone just lets them get away with it because they don’t have his bad attitude to top it off... Anyhow, I had one of the new guys type up your witness statement from yesterday, all we need is for you to read it through and sign it.” 

He rifled for a moment through a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, before pulling out a stack of papers that was depressingly small. And Duck - finally regaining his composure - felt a bit guilty at that, wishing he could be more helpful than he was, though the combination of the Pine Guard’s secrets and his own mishandling of the situation the day before left him with very little to offer. 

“The first page and a half cover the events at Leo’s, and the events at the Diner as well. And the rest is just legal mumbo jumbo, you know how it is.” Zeke continued, apparently not noticing the modicum of self-reproach that was no doubt playing itself out on Duck’s face. “There’s pens on the table when you’re ready to sign, and you can just hand it to Janet on your way out. Or to Sergeant Dixie, if you want to avoid getting caught in her web again. I’m sure you can handle it from here.” 

Zeke then made to leave, his hand on the door handle before he paused, seeming to consider something. 

“Duck?” He asked, the assertive edge to his tone leaking away, giving the impression that he was now speaking more as a citizen of Kepler than as its sheriff. 

“Yeah?” Duck replied. 

“There’s… If there were anything I could do for this town, and you knew about it and knew I didn’t… You’d tell me, right?”

“Yeah.” Duck responded, uncertain if he had it in him to get anything more out. 

“Good.” Said Zeke, though he didn’t appear entirely convinced. “There just seems to be a lot that happens around here that I don’t know about, and I’ll be honest with you Duck, it scares the shit out of me. But you always seem to be right in the middle of it, with those two friends of yours. And that new guy as well.” 

He paused, seeming to consider his next words carefully.

“You just seem like a guy with a lot of secrets Duck. And forgive my saying so, but it might be that you’re not even aware of some of them yourself. Now that’s fine, we’ve all got our troubles. But if those secrets you’re hiding might come between this town and its safety, you’d better figure them out quick. Because I get the feeling that we’re relying on you a bit more than we think.” 

And with that final word and nothing else, he left Duck in the conference room - alone except for a witness statement full of half-lies and a budding sense of panic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's left such kind comments so far! Now, some important business: my lovely and extremely talented friend Bob just did some amazing fanart for this fic, which can be found here: https://sincerelywrong.tumblr.com/post/185833943929/hundreds-of-years-before-duck-newton-even-had-the
> 
> I've been looking at it for five hours now, its beautiful....


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me a bit longer than a week to update this time! I've been wanting to write quickly, because I'm absolutely terrified about what the next few episodes will contain, and what they're going to do to my heart.... But I was very busy this week, including but not limited to seeing Carly Rae and losing my mind. So a good portion of this ended up being written while I was camping outside beneath the stars, as will become apparent I'm sure.  
> There's lots in store for you today, hope you enjoy!

A shivering morning light had danced across the windshield as Duck drove him home that morning. And it wasn’t until he’d been dropped off - watching the retreating brake lights of the truck as they cast a reflective glow that gathered among what early mist still clung to the forest floor - that Indrid realized how until now, his full name had never meant anything. 

It had always been a joke, more so among the people around him than to himself. Indrid Cold always was. Invite him to a midday bonfire party in the desert and he’ll still bring a light jacket, they said. But it became apparent, only now, that he hadn’t been living up to it. Not really, anyway. Because the way he felt just then, deep in the heart of summer with the morning heating up around him, was perhaps the coldest he’d ever been. 

It was not in the physical sense, as it turned out. Although this realization had only come after he had quarantined himself to his camper and cranked every spare heater in his possession to full blast, stewing beneath so many layers of coats for so long that he’d actually worked up a rare sweat. Instead, it occurred to him that it felt more like a bone-deep chill. Like something untouchable to his exterior was freezing him from the inside out. As if - much like the microwaved Hot Pockets he so enjoyed - he could burn entirely, and it would have no effect at all on his icy center. 

He wondered at the source of the cold, as he began to warm up a mug of eggnog in a certainly futile attempt to ease some of the internal ache he felt. And it was then that he had the most shocking realization of all: 

It was familiar. 

The dull pangs that nipped bitterly at his ribs were not, in fact, anything new. Rather, it was the same ache that had followed him from Sylvain to Earth - from campground to campground - from one decade to the next. He wasn’t sure of the source of its ire, and its onset had apparently been so slow and subtle that he hadn’t noticed it at all, until one night with Duck had spared him from it for long enough that he had gotten comfortable in its absence. 

That was the thing though, wasn’t it? Duck always seemed to be the one exception in the world, who in fact spared him from nearly everything. Even when they’d first met, he hadn’t taken Indrid’s loneliness and isolation as a warning sign. He hadn’t questioned or teased him about his odd habits in a way that didn’t include him in the joke. And he hadn’t asked more of Indrid than he was willing to give, when somehow he was perhaps the one person in the whole world Indrid was willing to give everything. 

So the source of the pain, he realized with a sort of dawning horror, must have been the absence of Duck to begin with. Or at the very least, the absence of something, for which Duck was a perfect and unattainable remedy. 

Or perhaps a better metaphor - and one more fitting of his mothy ancestry - would be that he’d spent his entire life chasing down artificial light, only to finally experience the real thing and realize everything he’d had before would no longer be enough. 

The eggnog sat in the microwave tray, cooling and forgotten. 

It occurred to him, seconds or possibly minutes later into his self-reflective reverie, that perhaps the worst element of all of this was the realization itself. Had he never recognized the clenching sensation at his sternum, because its grip had never faltered, he could’ve gone on living with its presence under the perfect impression that he was as happy is it was possible for him to be. Now though, having experienced a new kind of complicated and torrential joy he’d never before considered himself capable of, it was hard to settle back down into the coldness that fit him like a well-worn glove. And the only solution - it seemed - was spending time with Duck, which was terribly painful in its own way. 

Now, especially, that he was separated from Duck - and no longer under the influence of the gentle calm that seemed to follow at the man’s heel without his awareness - the implications of everything Indrid had admitted to himself last night hit him at full force. He was in love with Duck Newton. Seemingly against the will of the universe, unless this was all the setup to a cruel cosmic joke he’d somehow earned his place at the butt of. Regardless, it was brutally clear that - for whatever reason - he’d managed to fail in his attempts to avoid matters of the heart so spectacularly that he’d not only fallen in love face-first, he’d done it with the wrong person, and one of the only people in this entire human world whose name was written in the stars for somebody else. 

Absolutely typical. 

And now, he thought as he sunk into the couch in defeat, he found himself in a uniquely odd position. Spending time away from Duck was physically painful to him, somehow, and yet spending time with him was almost equally torturous. He’d wasted away the lovely breakfast they’d shared together by being plagued with the urge to reach out and grab his friend’s sleeve as he had the day before. Not his hand - he wouldn’t dare. But he was desperate to reassure himself that Duck was not only there, but was incapable of leaving the moment they were sharing without Indrid knowing. This was, of course, an impossible expectation in a number of ways - not the least of which being that it was hardly a healthy way to approach a relationship of any sort, and that it was impossible for anyone to do much of anything without Indrid seeing it coming. 

Although that wasn’t quite true either, because Duck had become his exception in yet another way he never would have expected. Where only two days ago watching Duck’s future had been one of his greatest sources of amusement, he now found that the very concept of checking any more than a day ahead in his friend’s life was terrifying. It seemed that at any moment someone else would come along and sweep Duck off his feet, effectively shunting Indrid into the background forever. Or that somehow he would finally say the wrong thing, revealing too much or too little, and Duck would no longer choose to partake of his company. In fact, it seemed that it was not so much a question of “if” as it was “when”. 

Just when exactly was he going to lose him?

And how much was he going to lose? 

After a great deal of difficult thought on the subject, he decided he’d rather not know. 

That resolution somehow made the rest of the problem a bit easier to get a handle on, at least. If he allowed himself that ignorance, he could also allow himself to forget - for brief moments at a time - that what he had with Duck now was not built to last. And were it only a year, or 6 months, or even just a day that he had left before it all fell apart, he’d like to enjoy it while he could. That was not, of course, to say that he could forget himself entirely. But maybe he could forgive himself, just a bit. 

It was with this compromise in place that Indrid decided to call his friend. Or at least, he intended to, before realizing that despite his eagerness to see the man again they’d hardly been separated an hour, and Duck appreciated his alone time even more than most. So instead he cast his sight toward the rest of Duck’s day, with no small degree of trepidation at the prospect, hoping to find a moment that would be more convenient. And sure enough, it seemed Duck would be stopping by the farmer’s market at the edge of town after work - likely in anticipation of having to supply his own breakfasts for a while. 

However, in his excitement at having an opportunity to see Duck, Indrid managed to forget to call him at all - his mental faculties instead electing to focus once more on the now room-temperature eggnog in his microwave. And in fact it wasn’t until much later, when he began to pass the first stalls - filled with fresh parsley and overflowing with strawberries - that he actually remembered Duck had no idea he was coming. 

He was, of course, then filled with a panic. Would Duck think he was stalking him? Was he, in fact, stalking him? Certainly not, right? He’d had every intention of letting Duck in on the plan, it had just slipped his mind. But where was the line, really, when it came to his use of foresight? 

Before he was able to deduce any answers to those eternal questions, however, he felt a familiar hand on his shoulder. And even through three distinct layers of clothing, he knew exactly who that was. 

“Indrid, buddy! I didn’t expect to see you here.” Said Duck, an unassuming but undoubtedly delighted smile on his face. “I didn’t take you for a fresh veggies kind of guy, unless there’s some secret combination of brussel sprouts and pop tarts you’re about to rock my world with.” 

Indrid had by then turned around, and found himself - as he so often did with Duck lately - mortifyingly speechless. And although his equivalent of dumbstruck silence lasted significantly shorter a period than it did for most, Duck apparently knew him too well for it to go unnoticed entirely. In fact, his expression shuttered a bit, a worried tension working its way between his brows. 

“Oh, sorry man. Did you want to be left alone?” He asked, his tone turning from excited and friendly to apologetic. “That’s cool, I get it. I didn’t mean to interrupt, just wanted to say hi. But that’s done with, so I guess I’ll….” 

He began to back away slowly, and Indrid found himself so thrown by having a conversation he for once hadn’t expected at all that his eyes merely lingered on unhelpful details while his brain screamed at him to catch up. 

Duck’s forehead was a bit sweaty after his day at work, and his hair clung to it from where it poked out beneath his ranger’s hat... 

Duck’s sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and his forearms were thick and surprisingly muscular. He was wearing a wristwatch.... 

He should probably say something. 

Duck was further away now, still watching him in confusion. In his hand there was a reusable bag stuffed with produce…. 

“Celery!” Indrid said forcefully. 

Ah, there it was. 

Duck stopped his retreat, looking understandably confused. 

“Celery.” He repeated. “You need to buy celery. You think you’ve got some in your fridge, but it’s wilted. And you’re going to be disappointed tomorrow when you try to make your lunch.” 

Duck’s face didn’t change much, not that Indrid could blame him. “I…. You were looking at my lunch tomorrow?” He asked, with no accusation but plenty of bewilderment. “You didn’t come all the way here to tell me that, right? I mean, thank you of course, but I would’ve lived… I think anyway. Would I have?” 

“No!” Indrid rushed to explain, unfortunately with no excuse in mind. “No, no, no. I mean yes, you would’ve. Of course you would’ve. I wasn’t checking for that, really, it just popped into my head on its own. In fact, I actually just came here to… Well I wanted, anyway, to…” And here he felt himself physically deflate, already disappointed in his next words. “I also needed celery. Hot Pockets have begun to disagree with me.” 

It was hardly his best excuse, but somehow the truth had seemed suddenly far too revealing, Luckily, Duck’s inability to tell a lie didn’t make him the best candidate to catch someone else in one, and the cloud over his face cleared into the same bright smile as earlier. 

“Oh, alright then.” He said, approaching again. “Even I saw that one coming, so I don’t know how you missed it. If 20-year-old me lost his will to live on Hot Pockets alone after only a month, it can’t be done by anyone, that’s for sure.” And with that seemingly unremarkable sentence Duck was once more close to Indrid, and the icy grip on his core slowly began to melt away. 

Duck - for his part - continued his chatter, wholly unaware of his effect. “So what were you going to make? If you want company, I can tell you my killer recipe for chicken salad sandwiches. You’ve probably seen me make it, it’s my favorite quick food and not really complicated, but I’ll give you the whole thing anyway. Oh! Or I can tell you the secrets of my french onion soup. That one’s a family recipe now, just between me and Nemo. And the chef who invented it, I guess. And Ned. But I’ll let you in on it, I figure you can be trusted. Probably even more than Ned, if I’m honest.” 

As much as he wanted to enjoy his friend’s conversation in as uncomplicated a way as he could, Indrid began to notice that - just as he had worried - wrapping himself up in Duck’s presence had made it difficult to remember that all of this would end. And - just like he’d worried - he found he couldn’t bring himself to fight it. 

“That all sounds delightful.” He found himself saying, when what he should’ve said was ‘goodbye’. 

Needing no more encouragement, Duck began to walk toward the stall of a vegetable salesman he claimed to have a discount with (the reason having something to do with a pesky family of deer that had been nibbling at his crops, which Duck had helped to relocate with much more speed than the Animal Control Department ever would’ve managed). And Indrid followed close behind - still unable to contribute much to the conversation with the headspace he’d put himself in, although Duck seemed to recognize that and unquestioningly filled in his silence with enough chatter for the two of them. 

The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, and somehow that was the best thing in the world. Duck delighted him with story after ridiculous story - some involving the Parks Department, and some involving high school and his self-described ‘teenage dumbass syndrome’. Occasionally, though he was still very much blocking any larger revelations about Duck’s future, Indrid found himself checking forward for small items that his friend had forgotten to add to his shopping list - a couple of green onions here, a carton of the fresh in-season raspberries he loved so much there - and rather than interrupt the flow of a good story to warn him, he instead just purchased them himself and slipped them into his friend’s canvas shopping bag unnoticed. 

The onus of the conversation was not entirely on Duck, however, and especially after being given time to collect himself Indrid had a few of his own anecdotes to offer. A particular one - involving a Canadian Mountie, and his suspicion at discovering a drawing of his wife in Indrid’s camper during a vehicle inspection - had Duck laughing so hard he stopped right in the middle of the busiest section of the market, doubled over while his body was wracked with giggles and his eyes squeezed shut against tears of joy. And though he’d told the story a handful of times before, Indrid easily counted that particular rendition as one of his proudest moments. 

He hardly had it in himself to be ashamed, then, when only a few days later he repeated the experience. This time Duck was going to be having coffee by himself in the only cafe in town, at just the same moment that Indrid’s heartache was once more going to become unbearable. And given the likely probability that - were his friend not to seem otherwise engaged - he would be interrupted by an old high school teacher he had no interest in talking to, Indrid felt he wasn’t truly at any moral fault for sparing him from that. 

After that it became an accidental routine. Duck would find Indrid milling among the crowds on his errands almost as often as he didn’t. On Monday they had passed each other on the sidewalk in front of Dave’s Dehumidifier Depot, and had gotten to talking for so long they had ended up going to dinner together without either really knowing who had suggested it first. On Wednesday, Duck had stopped for gas just as Indrid had exited the 7/11 with an armful of Sour Patch Kids that was conveniently enough for two. On Saturday, they both found themselves at what might be the last operating Blockbuster Video, reaching for the same copy of Fight Club. And this odd and seemingly unpredictable routine that they shared had become so comfortable to Indrid that he had forgotten to worry about its improbability. Until one day - inevitably - Duck drew his attention to it. 

“You know, it’s funny how we keep running into each other.” He said, through a mouthful of apple - an impromptu picnic having been set up after Indrid had happened to more or less accidentally end up at the shore of the same lake where Duck would be taking his lunch break. 

Indrid hummed noncommittally. 

“Not that I’m complaining, obviously. It’s always a real treat seeing you.” Duck continued. “But actually the other day I was about to call you just to see if you wanted to grab a bite to eat or something, and I ended up not doing it because I figured I might just end up bumping into you anyway. Which I did, by the way.” 

Indrid cut in then, sensing Duck’s train of thought might lead him to a station closer to home than he’d prefer. “If you’re about to suggest that you’re the only person in this town who frequents the Dairy Queen, I’m afraid I’ll have to stop you right there.” 

Duck laughed at that. “No, I guess you’re right.” He said, his meal temporarily forgotten now as he chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully. “It’s just that it seems funny how we’re always in the same place, and it still took me way too long to be your friend. I feel like we should’ve gotten here much sooner… Like we were always supposed to be hang out, and it was just my dumb luck that it took until I was in my 30’s. I guess maybe our overlapping schedules aren’t really fate, since that seems pretty new.” He continued, still deep in thought. “Or I think it is, anyway. You probably wouldn’t have noticed me, but I feel like I’d definitely remember seeing someone with such a specific look like yours just walking around. I don’t know… I’m rambling. I’ve just been thinking about it, and I’m just pretty certain that however fate works, it probably included the idea that no matter what I was always going to know you.” He trailed off there, the last words said in a rush, almost as if he wanted to get them all out into the world before they escaped him entirely. After a moment’s pause, he exhaled, and added: “Sorry, is that corny?” 

It was, Indrid thought. Deeply and overwhelmingly so. He hardly knew how to respond.

As much as it caused him a crisis whenever he found himself once more alone and in a clear state of mind, he had gotten no better at resisting the urge to love Duck with as much outward openness as his heart seemed to have decided to inwardly allow itself. And although he was always cognitively aware that he shouldn’t make his feelings known, every once in a while - when the sun hit that dimple on Duck’s cheek just right, or he passed him a fresh strawberry in a way that felt like the whole world was opening up to him - Indrid found that it was difficult to remind himself of the weight of his responsibility in remaining quiet. In some moments, like now, the idea that to speak the entire truth would not only ruin him entirely but certainly hurt Duck too was a hard one to believe. And, though it felt selfish, he could barely bring himself to fight it. 

But, of course, he had to.

“I agree wholeheartedly.” He said carefully, for some reason avoiding Duck’s gaze despite the fact that the impenetrable red lenses of his glasses made eye contact impossible anyway. “I’ve been thinking about that myself in fact. And I’m afraid that despite my abilities for prediction, I’m just as in the dark as you when it comes to the whims of fate. But whether it’s because of some sort of divine intervention or even in spite of it, I’m pretty sure that no matter what path in life I took, I always would have insisted on knowing you.” 

The friendly smile that Duck always gave so readily softened at that, turning into something else entirely. An expression Indrid couldn’t quite place, which made him more than a little nervous. 

“Would you…” Began Duck, his face unchanged, though an odd anxious light had suddenly entered his eyes. “Would you like to bump into me on purpose tomorrow? I’ve been planning to head out to Sundial Peak lately - I get the feeling there’s something there I need to figure out, but fuck me if I can remember just what it is. Anyway, it’ll be a night hike, since I’m working a double tomorrow, but it’d be nice to have some company if you want to join. Maybe we can figure out whatever it is my brain isn’t telling me.”

And though Indrid could sense - future vision or no - just how fraught an invitation that would be for his weak will and stubborn heart, he responded without hesitation. 

“It would be my pleasure.”

************ 

Duck Newton was, and always had been, a man of great anxiety. It had seen him through his childhood, through all of his adolescent mistakes, and through a luckily less fraught adulthood like a particularly yappy dog that always nipped at his heels. And while years ago - at a much younger age - his nervousness had managed him more than he had managed it, these days he prided himself on just how much effort he put into venting it effectively. 

Part of the process in dealing with his anxiety in a healthy way, though, was noticing and admitting when he felt it. And today he felt it an awful lot. 

It was, in this instance, a combination of several different variations on the same fretful theme, like a potluck dinner from hell. There was, to start with, a healthy heaping of the feeling that he was missing something extremely important - like he’d lost his keys, on a larger and more cosmic scale. There was also the feeling that something major was bearing down on him, which was separate from but almost certainly linked to the first problem. 

And then, of course, there was the nervousness about Indrid. 

He wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, and maybe it had been the case all along, but he’d begun to notice that just being around the man gave him butterflies. Or would they be moths? No, that was ridiculous... 

Regardless, for reasons he was neither willing to parse nor admit, he had begun to feel about Indrid in a way he hadn’t felt in a very long time. The same way he’d felt when his parents had given him that poster of Larry Wilcox from CHiPS for his twelfth birthday, and he’d hung it right above his bed. Because - despite the fact that he refused to use this particular verbiage - Duck Newton had a crush. And, as had been the case with most of the crushes in his illustrious career, the object of his affections was impossibly distant from him. 

This time, however, was decidedly more painful than his experience with Officer Jon Baker had been. And not solely because he was an adult, and therefore capable of feelings with more depth and complexity. This specific crush seemed to be of a type he’d never experienced before. It felt much more desperate than the one he’d had on the guy who scooped ice cream at the Huntington Baskin Robbins a while back, and it was much stronger than the one he’d had on that handsome and surprisingly nerdy ski bum who had passed through town a few winters ago. Granted, the reason for that could be because he knew Indrid so well - and in fact it probably was. But also, somehow, it wasn’t. It seemed, rather than being a question of the chicken or the egg, that they had both sprung into being in spontaneous unison. Or perhaps that instead of cause and effect, it had been the effect that in fact caused the cause. Because - after having sat with the feeling for months, and ignoring it almost entirely in his conscious mind until it had been thrust to the forefront without his consent - Duck was certain that the particular and unique sensation of being around Indrid had always been there, right from the first time they’d met. And possibly even before that, because he couldn’t be entirely sure he hadn’t felt the same butterflies he felt almost constantly now back when he’d first answered Indrid’s call on that payphone all those months ago. This wasn’t to say that he didn’t think he would’ve wanted to spend time with Indrid regardless, he was about as interesting as a guy could be in Duck’s opinion. But perhaps, if anything, it would’ve been easier. 

Unfortunately, the issue at hand was not solely to do with the strength of his own ridiculous feelings. Because it seemed to be that if Duck was going to be the one to discover a new and more powerful form of crush than had ever been experienced before, it was only right that he have it on the one single person he’d ever met who had no interest in the concept at all. 

And that was what Duck found truly unbearable about it, at the end of the day. As silly as the entire concept was - given how flustered he had found he could be made by Indrid standing there looking at him without saying anything at all - it was infinitely more so when he remembered that not only did he have a soulmate out there somewhere, but so did Indrid. And even were he to give up on waiting for his own soulmate entirely - which he had to admit he had guiltily considered - it seemed so extremely unlikely that Indrid would be interested in the thought of pursuing a relationship with someone who wasn’t fated for him when he’d already gone so far as to give up on the idea of having one with the person who was. 

Actually, what was perhaps truly worst of all was something Duck would never admit to anyone. Not even to Ned at his most charming, or Aubrey on her luckiest day. It was the fact that he had, more than once, silently and oh-so privately wished that his soulmate was Indrid. That the mark on his wrist wasn’t just another pair of eyes he would someday notice in a crowd, but were instead a pair that belonged to this one specific man who had come to mean more to him than just about anybody he’d ever encountered. And even this closely-guarded secret was bittersweet, as - were it true - it would mean that Indrid had rejected him on arrival. 

Because surely he would know, were that the case. Even if, somehow, his own soul mark didn’t tip him off, his capacity for foresight couldn’t possibly miss something of this scale. But even so, it implied a world where - in whatever capacity they could make it work - Indrid might let Duck mean something to him. 

Duck shook himself from his contemplation then, unwilling to let himself mope a minute longer. And as he stepped out of the cab of his truck, into the cool and starlit night, he saw a familiarly lean but heavily padded figure approaching him from a distance, as the moonlight reflecting from Lake Solitude framed Indrid in a heavenly glow. 

And Duck figured it wasn’t moping as much as a statement of fact to say that it was absolutely torturous to see. 

When at last they were close, they greeted each other silently, their matching grins seeming to be enough to communicate the excitement of seeing each other without needing to sully the moment with words. And in fact they didn’t speak at all as they had followed the short trail up from the base of the lake to its conclusion at the summit of Sundial Peak. 

The stars seemed even closer at the top, although Duck knew very well how impossible that was. But whether or not it was scientifically true, the pleasant night sky of summer felt like it had wrapped the two of them in a quilt, which allowed them to huddle together - unseen by the world, and comfortably warm. And while the galaxies and constellations unraveled themselves endlessly in perfect clarity before them, sparkling and scattered across the night sky like a black satin blanket on the lap of the world’s clumsiest jeweler, Duck found that - mortifyingly enough - perhaps the most beautiful thing about the whole situation was who he got to share it with. 

He was an absolute goner, wasn’t he. 

Indrid, blissfully unaware of Duck’s internal crisis, removed one of his many coats and laid it down on the edge of the cliff, so that he could sit on one corner of it with plenty of room to share. Needing no more invitation than that, Duck joined him, and they sat there for a moment - looking at their legs dangling over the side of the cliff, their shoes occasionally knocking clumsily together when swayed by the light breeze that was able to reach them so high above the treeline. 

“Look,” Duck found himself saying, though he hadn’t been planning to say anything at all. “You see the way the moonlight hits the trees on the peak over there? Isn’t it cool? Back in high school my friends and I used to think that if you squint it looks just like waves on the ocean... I think I could probably look at just that forever.” 

Indrid’s line of sight was of course as inscrutable as ever, but his face was turned toward Duck rather than the forest opposite them as he gave a small close-mouthed smile, and nodded in agreement. 

A few more moments of comfortable silence slipped through the air between them, before it was this time Indrid’s turn to break the silence. 

“So what was it that you were hoping to find up here, Duck?” He asked, curious rather than demanding. 

“Oh, I don’t really know.” Duck responded, a bit embarrassed at how obviously directionless his investigative process was. “This is one of my favorite spots, and I haven’t been out here in a spell, so it might’ve just been that my subconscious was complaining about that or something. But I just kept getting the feeling that something important was supposed to happen out here… I think it’s the kind of thing we can’t find though, it’ll just end up coming to us.”

Indrid nodded again, seeming satisfied at the response. And just then, Duck’s phone began to ring, the opening interlude from Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” causing Indrid to raise a brow questioningly. 

“Aubrey set it for herself, she thinks she’s funny.” Duck explained, before answering. “Hey Aubs, I’m sort of busy right now and my service is real bad, is this urgent?” 

The sound of Aubrey shushing someone - most likely Dani - came through the other end of the line. “No, no... Well actually, yes it is Duck. Dani and I were just wondering if you and Indrid have gotten your shit together yet.” She said, her grin about as obvious as it was possible to be when she wasn’t standing right there in front of him. 

“Did she say my name?” Indrid asked, seeming puzzled. And unfortunately his soft voice apparently carried well enough to reach Duck’s phone, because he heard a shriek of excitement come from it - although which of the girls it belonged to, he couldn’t say. 

“Is he with you right now?” Came a voice that was distinctly Dani’s, although the sound quality made her seem distant. “Are you idiots finally figuring it out? You’re driving us crazy.” 

Duck had no idea what they were referring to, and luckily it seemed that neither did Indrid, but the direction of their implications was making him nervous. 

“Hey, I have to go, we’re trying to follow a lead I’ve got. I’ll let you know if we find anything.” He said, and without even waiting for their response he immediately hung up. 

“Sorry.” He said, this time addressing Indrid. “I never know what the hell those two are talking about.” 

Indrid just shrugged with a smile, seeming unbothered. “If it helps,” he said, “neither do I. Even when it comes to their futures, they both tend to be a bit… baffling. Although it appears that they’re now planning on making cookies, which they have at least a thirty-five percent chance of burning, so I think you’ve escaped the third degree for now.” 

Just then, a small Virginian Tiger Moth flit between them, seemingly interested in the light from Duck’s phone - though its interest didn’t last long, and it flew away just as quickly as it had arrived, its path down to the trees visible for a long while thanks to the reflective glow the moon lent its white wings. 

“Wait a minute,” Duck said, as something had only just occurred to him. “I know you don’t like to be called the mothman, so pardon my next question...” 

“You can call me anything, Duck.” Indrid cut in. 

Duck gave a pleased smile, before continuing. “Aw, well thanks. But anyway, if you are the mothman, that sort of implies that you can speak to moths, right? Can you get them to-” 

“-do your bidding?” Indrid finished for him, grinning in earnest amusement. “Duck, if you think I can control moths, and I haven’t asked them to eat your Whitesnake t-shirt yet, you don’t know me very well at all.” 

Duck laughed truly hard at that, enough so that Indrid began to laugh himself, just out of surprise at Duck’s amusement. And before he knew it, they were both giggling uncontrollably, leaning back on their hands to keep from losing their balance over the cliff’s edge. 

Duck thought that - despite his propensity for being alone - Indrid might be one of the most entertaining people he’d ever met, and everyone who didn’t get to know him was really missing out. And he even meant to tell him exactly that, just then. Only when he turned to face his friend, he saw that the man had laughed so hard he’d begun to cry a little bit, and he’d pushed his sunglasses to his forehead to wipe away the tears. 

The first thing Duck noticed was that his eyes were beautiful. They were a deeply pale grey, ringed with a darker black around the iris that gave it definition from the pale white of his pupils. In all his life, he’d never imagined that they’d be that color, although at seeing them it only felt right. 

The second thing he noticed was that he’d imagined them to be anything at all. And it was only then that he realized what that meant. The eyes he was looking at were familiar. Squinting and wrinkled at the edges, so expressively showing sheer delight. And a soft tone to them that managed to narrow down the entire world until it only existed as Duck and Indrid and the space between them. 

That was his soulmate. 

Indrid… was his soulmate. 

The emotions attached to this realization came at Duck so fast he hardly had time to recognize them, although from the concerned look Indrid was now giving him with those very same eyes… the eyes he’d known all his life… it would seem his face was hardly doing a good job at masking them. It felt something like joy had mixed with despair and had been whipped together with all of Duck’s previous anxieties until his brain had become a frothy mess. And it was perhaps for this very reason that he did what he did next, despite the fact that he had logically - in all of his fantasies - never been planning to. 

“Are you alright, Duck?” Indrid asked, seeming genuinely worried. 

Wasn’t he sweet? 

Duck nodded, his mouth dry and his palms drenched. “I think I figured out why we’re up here.” He said. 

And before he had time to think about what a bad choice he was about to make, he grabbed Indrid by the lapel of one of his many remaining coats, and kissed him for all he was worth.


	7. Chapter 7

The unfortunate thing about a kiss is that - when it’s done right - it feels like the only thing going on in the world, and indeed the only thing that has happened or ever will. However, as we all know from birth and are still later shocked to discover, no kiss lasts forever. 

So perhaps, then, the actually unfortunate thing about a kiss is that while the moment itself doesn’t last forever, sometimes - and very rarely, but still sometimes - it becomes the only thing you can think about from that point onwards. 

Indrid Cold did not begin the evening thinking about a kiss, in fact he never in his life would’ve dared consider it. For all that he had admitted to himself that he loved Duck Newton with every inch of his closely-guarded heart, he was still no closer to daring to grab the sleeve of the man’s jacket again than he was to reviewing the Cryptonomica’s mothman display, as Ned had been begging him to. 

Instead, as he had turned the corner of the trail where it widened to reveal the lake and the distant shadow of Duck’s ranger Bronco parked on the far side of it, he had found his thoughts rather singularly focused on what might be considered the opposite. As much as he had unthinkingly walked himself right into agreeing to a night under the stars with the man he was desperately in love with, it was perhaps more important than ever before that he remember just why it was that he couldn’t allow himself to be swept up - even just for a moment - in the emotions that crashed against his chest with all the forceful consistency of an ocean that refused to go out to tide. 

Gone now, at least, were the sweeping and overgeneralized rules he had set for himself so many decades ago. For as long as he had considered himself likable but unloveable, it had apparently only taken a few regular visits from a forest ranger, a sleight-of-hand magician, and an overly-moralistic conman to knock down that wall of his so entirely that he discovered he had more room for friendship - now slowly appearing in the forms of Dani, Barclay, Jake, Mama, Leo, and others - than he ever would have suspected. Those rules were replaced, however, by others so rooted in rationality and cold hard truths that they were not so easily abandoned. He allowed himself to love Duck, as much because he didn’t think he could stop himself as anything else. But he couldn’t possibly let his friend know how he felt. And he couldn’t possibly allow them to try for something more, even if Duck were somehow willing. 

He couldn’t possibly allow Duck to love him back, not like that, not when forever was never an option. Nothing was certain, and he knew that for a fact. But maintaining such a dreadful distance from Duck as he did was the only way he could possibly face the overwhelming probability that all of this would end, and probably soon. 

Still, as much as those thoughts weighed on him as he made his way around the lake toward his friend - the sound of his approaching footsteps masked by the crickets and frogs singing along to the wind that blew through the trees - he decided that he couldn’t possibly allow such a beautiful night to pass him by without giving himself permission to enjoy it. So he accepted the embrace of Duck’s warm and comfortable presence as easily as if it had been physical, and by the time he was next to the man he was certain he was smiling the wide grin that had given his human form the same fearful status among the locals that his Sylvan form had always enjoyed. 

Duck didn’t seem to mind though, and in fact he only grinned back. 

They had gone on like that - smiling without talking, communicating without saying anything - for the entirety of the relatively short hike to the top of Sundial Peak, and Indrid never allowed himself to forget for even a moment how lucky he was to be there. When they had finally stopped at the top, and sat together at the edge of the cliff - huddled together sitting on Indrid’s jacket for no real practical reason other than the fact that it required them to be close - Duck was the one to finally break the silence. And as he pointed out the way the moon cast its light across the trees, and talked about how he loved the sight of that more than just about anything else, Indrid wondered for the first time in his life if just one moon was enough. 

The night could have gone on exactly like that, with no developments in their investigation and no real excitement at all, and Indrid would have selfishly been happy with it. But the future was a very big place, and as much as he might like to prevent it from encroaching on his present he had long ago learned that there was no such thing as a dam that couldn’t overflow. So it was that he found himself making what he might have considered one of the most innocuous decisions of the night, only to bring the future crashing down over him with no warning at all. 

Every time he took off his glasses, he wished he did it more often. It was so rare that he had any reason to, really, and when he did he usually did it completely - resulting in a mothy transformation that did strange things to his vision (compound eyesight being a convenient if perhaps hexagonal way of looking at the world). But as much as he’d accidentally begun to find comfort in his ability to obscure the direction of his gaze behind his impenetrable red lenses, he’d always found that whenever he removed them he’d almost forgotten entirely what everything looked like without a rose-colored tint. Duck’s eyes were a deep blue as it turned out, which he wasn’t sure he’d quite noticed before. And his cheeks really were as red as they’d looked, whether due to the wind or the cold or something else entirely, there was no knowing. The wristwatch on his arm glowed a faint blue light as well, which had been blocked by the contrasting red of his glasses so well he hadn’t really noticed it before. And the moon cast a bright and imperfect reflection down onto the lake below them, which - from such a distance away as they were - looked completely and perfectly still. 

Indrid felt completely and perfectly still as well. 

The small act of pushing his glasses to his forehead felt somehow monumental now, and though he hadn’t moved an inch he felt closer to Duck than he ever had been before. It was as if someone had removed the screen from a film and pushed him right inside it. He felt so very present and real in that moment that he wasn’t entirely sure he could read the future at all, even if he weren’t terrified of it, because the present itself was so vast and unknowable that there certainly couldn’t be anything solid to be gleaned from it. 

It was then that he turned back to Duck, expecting to find some calm in the warm grin he’d seen on the man’s face when he’d turned away only a second ago. Or had it been a second? Was time still passing the way it always had, or had he always been so wrapped up in the hours and days ahead of him that he’d never noticed how long a moment could last? As it turned out, though, none of that mattered. Because when Indrid turned back to his friend, expecting the warm comfort of his smile to finally ground him, he instead found an entirely new expression on the man’s face. It was one he’d seen many times before, but never all at once. Part of it was the look he knew from the faces of people experiencing a great tragedy - this was one he was deeply familiar with. Another part, though, was the way he’d often seen people react when they suddenly encountered a long-lost loved one, whose face they never thought they’d see again. And yet another part was a look he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before, though he recognized it immediately. It was one that coincided with the feeling that the entire future was laid before you, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. 

It terrified Indrid. All of it. 

And he hardly had a moment to worry about just what it was that Duck was experiencing, before he felt those hands - the warm ones that had passed him cups of eggnog, and had reached over to steal a bite of his French toast only a few days ago, and had sifted through a poetry book so carefully, and had once swung a sword so hard it had broken through the chains that had bound him and freed him from captivity - now grab his coat roughly, and yank him into a passionate kiss. 

The first thing that he registered was the fact that those hands felt familiar in a way that felt much older than Duck himself. He didn’t know why. 

The second thing he registered was that he wasn’t sure he could possibly imagine what it felt like to be cold, right now. And to contrast with that, Duck was shaking like a leaf. 

The third thing he registered was that he had begun to kiss back, and that was when he realized he needed to stop himself. 

With all the force he could muster, he raised one of his own hands and pushed it against Duck’s chest. His touch was light, and he barely managed the motion, but Duck respected the signal regardless and immediately pulled back. His wide-brimmed ranger’s hat had been pushed roughly backward, so that it sat on his head at an odd tilt, and everything about him looked thoroughly ravished. Had they kissed for that long? And so passionately? Indrid found he now couldn’t remember, and no matter what he now had to do he couldn’t possibly bring himself to regret it. 

“We shouldn’t.” He said weakly. “I shouldn’t have let you…. We shouldn’t. I can’t.” 

The odd mixture of emotions that had still been playing themselves across Duck’s face all dropped at once, and Indrid felt his heart drop with it. 

Duck sat there for a second and breathed. In and out, in and out, his bottom lip trembling slightly. 

“Ok.” He finally said. “Ok. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.” 

And before he could allow himself to make a decision they would both regret, Indrid stood up - abandoning his coat entirely - and walked away. 

He didn’t hear Duck say sorry once more behind him, but it was just as well. His heart hurt enough as it was. 

***********

Indrid walked for hours, after that. 

Below the night sky and buried beneath the stars, he trudged his way through the forest - uncertain of where he wanted to go, and almost positive he’d left it somewhere behind him. He felt like a thrush battling a seaward storm, thrown this way and that, uncertain if the shimmer of light he hoped to chase to safety would be the very thing that drowned him. 

He managed, a few times, to almost entirely forget that the last few hours had truly happened. But shortly after he would invariably see a species of wildflower he couldn’t identify but knew Duck would be able to tell him all about, or a constellation he vaguely recognized from a time it had been pointed out to him before. And as much as he knew this wasn’t heartbreak - not in the earth-shattering way that losing a soulmate would be, anyway - his head seemed incapable of communicating that to his heart. In fact the only thing that kept him moving, aimless though he was, was the fear that were he to stop he’d never start again. 

If this wasn’t heartbreak, he couldn’t bear the thought of experiencing the real thing. It would probably kill him. 

That realization, at least, reassured him that he was making the right choice, painful as it might have been. And as much as it hurt him now - the grief of it sitting like an icy stone in his stomach with such weight and force that it almost burned - it would, inevitably, all have been for the best. It had to be. 

But the small look of disappointment that had flashed across Duck’s face before Indrid had left him sitting alone refused to leave him be, instead adamantly projecting itself in his mind’s eye with bitter and exquisite detail. And as much as his own pain hurt him, it was only doubled at the thought that he’d hurt Duck too. Whether or not his decision was the right one, and whether or not Duck would eventually be able to move on and forget the whole ordeal - likely in the arms of someone else, much as Indrid was now trying to ignore that painful notion - it was still the case that Indrid had hurt his friend right then. That he was in fact hurting right now, and Indrid couldn’t possibly do anything to help. And that it even might be that he could never help again. 

Duck had said he was sorry. He’d regretted it. 

After a great deal of circling and meandering, Indrid eventually found his way back to his Winnebago - the first rays of dawn casting a light into the otherwise abandoned Eastwood Campground in such a way that even the rusty red racing stripe on his camper looked like something beautiful, and he hardly felt he deserved it. 

The welcoming familiarity of his messy home only served to drive the reality of his situation through him like a stake to the heart, though. Among the piles of dirty clothes and behind the stacks of empty frozen food containers, there they were. All the drawings on the wall - predictions that had come true, though he hadn’t been able to quite bring himself to throw them away. There was Duck, haggling dramatically at the farmer’s market, more for the sport of it than for his budget. There was the two of them, sharing lunch by the pond. There was a late night viewing of Fight Club that had turned into a late night viewing of Space Jam halfway through, although Indrid remembered the way their hands had kept brushing in the bowl of Cheez-Its they had shared between them far better than the reason for the change anyway. 

Duck had said he was sorry. He’d regretted it. 

There was no turning back now. 

And perhaps it was accepting the finality of that situation that made Indrid decide he could handle anything, if he could handle this. And that there couldn’t possibly be a pain so great that he’d be able to avoid it simply by not seeing it coming. 

So, after hundreds of years of running from the concept of his soulmate, he finally decided to turn around and face it. 

The unfortunate thing about the future, for those who could see it, was that it really was a very big place. And while it was occasionally possible -through hard training and no small amount of luck - to hone an existing prescient ability to a point where one could receive visions that were more or less pertinent to a question at hand, it could hardly be expected that centuries of damming up a precognitive pipeline would create a pressure that could be so easily released in a convenient trickle. 

So it was that Indrid - with the intention of finally seeing his soulmate - instead saw everything but. 

Although that wasn’t quite true. He saw, for a brief moment once again, the short vision that had plagued him a few times before. The hand he knew from the way it was etched on his chest, reaching up desperately, as he tried and failed to catch it in his own. The glimpse of it alone made his palms sweaty. 

But that vision only lasted a short moment, as flashes of other futures jostled for attention, interrupting each other insistently and hardly providing enough context to be useful. He saw Duck and Aubrey, standing together deep in the forest, with serious looks on their faces. Aubrey opened her mouth to speak, looking for all the world like she was about to apologize for something, but before she could they were gone, and in their place was an oak tree. It stood silently for a second or two, red leaves rustling in a light breeze, before it began to crack down the center of its trunk - not from any outside force, but rather as if it was splitting itself in two from the heartwood itself. And just as quickly as it had appeared it too left, replaced now with a vision of Duck, standing resolutely at the base of the same lake where Indrid had just abandoned him. His sword was raised against an assailant Indrid couldn’t quite see, and it did him little good, as a long and horrible arm reached forward and hit him with such strength that he flew like a rag doll through the air, connecting finally with the sheer cliff of the mountain and collapsing in a terrifyingly still heap. Indrid screamed at seeing this - whether physically or just in his head he couldn’t say. He had been sucked too far into the realm of the future that the present had been all but lost to him, and he was helpless to stop it as more and more visions poured themselves out in front of him. He saw Aubrey and Dani, fighting off the abomination right there in the Eastwood Campground, both suffering injuries but neither giving up. He saw the entirety of the Pine Guard, gathered in the basement of Amnesty Lodge, their faces grim, looking as if they’d all lost a loved one. He saw Duck, now just outside the lodge, looking directly at him, his expression closed off and stern. 

He did not see the windows of his Winnebago, back in the present. He did not see the rain that fell down them in streaks. 

 

************

 

Dani and Aubrey had had enough of the bullshit. There was a time for letting nature take its course, and there was a time for taking action, they had decided. And the only thing necessary for the triumph of repression was for good lesbians to do nothing. So with a plateful of only partially-burned cookies and enough conviction for a small army between the two of them, they had borrowed Mama’s truck first thing that morning, and set out to either congratulate Indrid on having finally landed himself a boyfriend or smack him silly for having avoided the opportunity yet again. 

The scene they had arrived to when they pulled into the campground was certainly not encouraging by any stretch of the imagination. A light was on somewhere inside the Winnebago, but Duck’s Bronco was nowhere to be seen. Which meant either Duck - a man so set in his ways he may as well be made of molasses - had turned into an extremely early riser overnight, or Indrid had gone home alone. 

They shared an eyeroll before they exited the truck, hoods pulled up to protect them from the light drizzle of rain overhead, annoyed but hardly surprised. 

“Alright, Indrid!” Aubrey called out, her voice echoing slightly through the trees beyond the lot, causing some sort of small animal to jolt with surprise and scurry away from the bushes near them. “We tried to give you two dummies your time, but Dani and I have some really fun couple’s activity ideas, and we’d rather die than invite Ned and Barclay, so you two need to get your shit together. How does Iron Chef sound? Us two versus you two? Indrid?” She looked to Dani in confusion then, throwing up her arms in disbelief. 

“Maybe he’s never heard of Iron Chef.” Dani supplied helpfully, shrugging around the foil-covered plate of cookies she still held carefully in her hands. 

“Oh, good point, thanks Dani.” Replied Aubrey in a gentle tone, before turning once more to the camper and picking up her earlier shout. “It’s a cooking competition Indrid! There’s certain ingredients we both have to use. We can make eggnog one of them, if that helps…. It’s doesn’t have to be that either, we also want to do an escape room…” She trailed off then, finally losing some of her confidence as she still got no response. “Indrid? Come on, don’t take this personally! We’re only here instead of at Duck’s because we decided you’d be the weaker link. Not in a bad way! Just cause Duck can hold down an emotion forever, I’m pretty sure…. Indrid? Are you ok?” 

They neared the door now, the earlier dramatics dropped in favor of a touch of actual worry. Indrid had always been game to play along somehow, although the specifics of his responses often depended on what mood he was in. But he’d never just given them silence. 

Aubrey reached forward to test the handle, before thinking twice and signaling Dani to back up and give her cover. Against what, she had no idea. But something wasn’t right. 

“Indrid?” She called once more, trying to add a calm levelheadedness to her tone now, although she hardly felt it. “I’m going to come in now, I think the door is unlocked. If you want to stop me, now’s your chance.” 

And still there was nothing. 

Needing no more go ahead than that, she tested the handle, her thumb slowly adding pressure to the push-button until she worked up the courage to throw it open all at once. 

At first, in the muted darkness of the camper - lit only by a single lamplight coming from the far end - she saw nothing. 

Then, in the small sliver of natural light that poured through the doorframe, she saw something she truly wished she didn’t. 

That was the abomination. 

She backed up quickly, her heavy boots kicking up rocks and gravel in her haste and an unconscious flame lighting in her had, as she called to Dani desperately to warn her. She didn’t let the creature out of her sight for a moment, though, worried it might disappear entirely. 

The fire in her palm danced, as the drizzling rain that continued around them attempted to put it out with no amount of luck. The abomination stood entirely still, for the moment, its hulking humanoid form only partially visible where the square of natural light cut through the open door. 

It was then that she noticed just what it was lurking over. Beneath one of the drooping antlers of the creature, and partially obscured behind its long and sinister claws, a body lay on the floor. Collapsed prone, his glasses pushing awkwardly against his face with the odd angle he was positioned in. 

That was Indrid. 

Needing no more incentive, Aubrey whipped out her magical knife, and threw it as hard as she could. 

 

********** 

Duck Newton was not moping. He didn’t even know how to mope, thank you kindly. And in fact he was only eating ice cream on a waffle at 9:30 in the morning because he was the master of his fate, and the captain of his soul. This was the behavior of a free agent, and not of a man whose heart was broken. 

He figured he might have a better shot of convincing himself of this if he was able to pick his head up from where it lay on the table and actually eat his breakfast before it melted, but today might be a day of baby steps. 

Nemo batted at his pant leg, clearly concerned but unable to express himself in any way other than the be mildly annoying. And Duck grunted in what he hoped was a soothing manner, trying to reassure him. 

Okay, so maybe he was heartbroken. 

He was allowed, though. In the last twelve hours he’d gone from thinking he’d set himself up on a nice non-date with his crush, only to find out that his crush was in fact the literal love of his life, only to kiss the man and be reminded that he - specifically - was repulsive to him. 

This called for another scoop of ice cream. Not that he’d been able to force down the first two, but it felt constructive. 

He couldn’t help but wonder, though…. And he really knew he shouldn’t…. But he couldn’t help but wonder just what it was about him that Indrid thought was so unlovable. He was a nice guy, and plenty responsible, and he generally tried to be a good person to be around. Sure, he wasn’t out there living the life of a big-shot rockstar or something. But he’d chosen to be an Environmental Protection Ranger because it had felt like it was morally the right thing to do in the world he was living in now, and fuck anyone that thought he should regret that. 

Although that was what really sucked ass about all of this, he thought. Indrid didn’t seem like he’d ever judged Duck’s decisions. The man had done nothing but respect their friendship and enjoy his company, as far as he’d ever been able to tell. And far be it from Duck to think that just because someone liked him as a friend they owed him anything romantically just because he’d asked for it. But with Indrid there was such an enormous rift between the way he talked to Duck, and the way he talked about his soulmate, that they might as well be two entirely different people. 

Were they entirely different people? No, Duck reasoned, as he unbuckled his watch briefly to examine his soulmark once more, clasping it again quickly before the pain in his chest made his eyes get all watery. Those were Indrid’s eyes for sure. Those were the exact eyes he’d seen that night, and the exact eyes he’d secretly always known were under those red reflective glasses, though he hadn’t realized he’d known until it had become too obvious to ignore. 

Now, though, there was no point to any of it. Duck had - for whatever stupid stupid reason - kissed Indrid, when the man could not have more obviously been trying to politely let him down easy. And now whatever friendship they had built together was lost, all because he’d been impulsive and lovesick and unable to take a hint. 

“Jeeze Louiseus, Nemo.” He moaned, though the cat had long since lost interest and left to curl up on a sunny spot on the couch. “I ruined the whole fucking thing didn’t I? I feel like I’m going to die.” 

It was, of course, dramatic hyperbole, and Duck knew that. But it was also somehow a more accurate descriptor than anything else he could come up with. He was not a man of great eloquence - when things needed to be said plain and to the point he was your guy, but if you wanted a flowery speech you were better off looking for Ned. And yet somehow, at some point, between all the shared lunches and random little encounters and visits to the Winnebago and chats at the farmers market, Duck had fallen in love with Indrid. It had been so slow and subtle that he hadn’t even noticed it happening, and in fact it was only now that the feeling had been wrenched away from him with such finality and force that in its absence he realized that there wasn’t a chance in hell a crush could contain the amount of feelings he’d built up inside for the man.

Indrid was like a breath of fresh air, the kind of breath he’d let be his dying one if it meant he could hold it forever. And that was just the sort of desperate thought he’d never quite understood when he’d read it in stories, but now - try as he might - he couldn’t help but find it true. 

He thumped his head against the table, his spoon rattling uselessly in the bowl of melted ice cream, and Nemo meowed in agitation. 

“Sorry Neems.” Duck said, more to the linoleum paneling than to his cat. But he figured it was about as effective either way. 

And just as he was about to hit absolute rock bottom, taking a nap while sitting upright still in the clothes he had on yesterday, his phone rang. Luckily, it being an old corded landline attached to the wall of the kitchen, he hardly had to move his arm to pick it up, or he might not have at all. 

"Hrmph?" He grumbled by way of greeting, figuring it was truly the best he could do right now.

“Duck,” came the distinct voice of Mama from the other end of the line. “You need to come to the lodge right away. Dani just showed up… Lugging Indrid and Aubrey. They’re both in a bad way, Duck. We're thinking it was the abomination. Don’t know how she managed to get them in on her own, but it’s time for an emergency meeting.” 

And without thinking twice, Duck grabbed his favorite jacket from where it still hung on the coat rack opposite the litter box, and rushed out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bear with me guys, there's still 3 more chapters worth of time for things to turn around! Or maybe they won't, I'll never tell. Also, no major spoilers, but can I say: Episode 31? First of all, Griffin, thank you for the delicious fucking food. Second of all, if you're going to so blatantly read my fanfiction you could at least leave a comment. "Indrid grabs Duck's watch on his wrist" my whole ass....


	8. Chapter 8

For almost as long as it had been standing, a quilt had hung above the fireplace of Amnesty Lodge. The decision to put it there had certainly been an odd one, though it had perhaps more importantly been intentional. Mama, wise as ever, had reckoned that the traditional mounted deer head - or a jackalope, as Barclay had suggested - wouldn’t quite strike the right tone with which to greet visitors, given the operative word in their name was not “lodge”, as it would be in most other places, but rather “amnesty”. And more than being a handful of white pine walls and a roof, what they were building was a place of forgiveness and welcoming and warmth. Where anyone - not just Sylvans cast aside by their home planet, but truly anyone - who had been rejected by the family they had always assumed themselves to be a part of could find a fire to rest beside, and a chance of new friends. 

And now, even all those years later, when the usual crowd at the lodge was asked who had come up with the idea of the quilt itself (and they were asked a lot, with varying degrees of politeness given its mismatched and slightly misshapen appearance) they invariably found it was hard to say. Because while the idea could have been anybody’s, the quilt itself had become everybody’s. Barclay and Jake had been the ones to pick out the ridiculous clashing materials from the Joann’s Fabrics in nearby Huntington. Mama had been the one to throw in her extensive knowledge of knot tying to create little delicate yarn designs across the whole thing. Moira had been the one to stitch the blanket together, her hands sometimes reaching through the fabric into difficult places that were helpful for sewing, if not entirely physically plausible. And in fact every resident of the lodge at the time - and even some since - had ended up contributing in some way or another. 

When Duck pulled up to the lodge in a rush that day, however - the tires of his truck skidding to a halt across the gravel of the driveway, and his panicked brain hardly remembering to take the keys from the ignition - he noticed almost immediately upon entering that for the first time since he’d been visiting, certainly, the quilt was not hung up at all. It was, instead, wrapped around a shivering mound of blankets and coats, underneath which he could only assume was Indrid. 

Time stopped, just then. Not with any coaxing from Duck, and not as completely as he would have wanted it to. But for just a moment, his anxious brain quieted with the same entirety that the chattering in the lodge did, and the world became so silent he could swear he heard Indrid’s shuddering breaths louder than anything else in the room. 

The moment ended almost as soon as it started, though, with the sudden force of Barclay’s hand on his shoulder snapping him back into the regular passage of time with all the speed of a trolley hurtling down a hastily rerouted track. 

“They’re both ok.” Barcley reassured in that soft strong voice of his, seeming not to have noticed the small journey Duck had just taken. “Or they will be, anyway. Aubrey’s sleeping in her room, her arm’s pretty fucked up, but it’ll heal just fine after a month or so. And she’s already excited that she might get a very cool scar on her shoulder. Indrid is… well physically he’s fine, we think, except for some weird surface-level scratching on his chest. It was probably all the layers he wears that kept him from getting it much worse, actually. But we can’t seem to warm him up, and he’s not all that lucid as a result.” 

Duck looked across the room once more, to where just about every duvet and throw in the lodge that didn’t have someone sleeping underneath it had apparently been commandeered and thrown over the man in question. Indrid was laying on the couch nearest to the fireplace, and was as far as Duck could tell curled into such a tight ball that without a Fourth of July picnic’s worth of blankets over him he wouldn’t take up more than a cushion. He looked so small and helpless that it took a good majority of Duck’s willpower to not march right over there, toss all that fabric aside, and wrap him up in a bear hug that he through sheer force of will wouldn’t allow a single draft of cold into. 

But, of course, he’d more than learned his lesson the last time he’d made an impulsive decision about Indrid’s personal space, and he’d rather not layer on a helping of awkwardness when the poor man was having a rough enough time as it was. So he instead crossed his arms in a way that felt much more helpless and much less authoritative than he’d hoped, and turned back to Barclay - the man’s eyes clearly searching him for the answer to a question Duck wasn’t entirely sure of. 

He had every intention of finding a new subject, though it seemed there was nothing to say about the situation at all. Luckily, however, he was spared the effort as Jake came skidding around the corner, the colorful retro Hi J’s he insisted on wearing providing him almost no salvation from Barclay’s militant floor-polishing schedule. 

“Guys, Aubrey’s awake again!” He shouted, not even pausing as he braced himself for his inevitable collision with the nearest wall. “She - oof. Shit Barclay, ease up on the waxing huh?” He continued, grinning good-naturedly as he picked himself up off the ground. “She said she wants to see you specifically Duck. Actually, what she said was something like ‘Duck better get his stupid ass in here and explain what the hold up is, before I find it myself and kick it into the next dimension with him still attached’. Which I thought was pretty excellent, but my version is more polite.” 

Barclay shot Duck a look that was just sympathetic enough to seem caring, but not nearly enough to give him the impression he wouldn’t be walking into the dragon’s den alone. “Good luck buddy,” he said, confirming Duck’s fear, “I’ll keep an eye on your man while you’re gone.” 

Duck wrinkled his nose in annoyance at the betrayal, and didn’t realize until he had paused a bit nervously outside Aubrey’s door that he should’ve corrected Barclay on his phrasing. Indrid wasn’t Duck’s man any more than Matt Doyle was, and that wasn’t likely to change. Hopefully the guy was in a small minority that had gotten the wrong impression, although with the way Kepler apparently loved to gossip he was starting to doubt it. 

“Would you please just come in already?” Aubrey’s muffled voice came from through the closed door, startling him a bit. “How am I going to kick your ass if it’s more than five feet away? I’m bedridden!” 

Duck entered, a bit shocked that Aubrey had known he was there at all, and found that she was tucked snugly into her bed, with Dani sitting at her side making what looked like an appropriately cast-sized boondoggle bracelet, and Dr. Harris Bonkers Phd curled up at her feet. 

“First of all, you aren’t bedridden.” Duck said, his older-brotherly instinct forcing its way into the driver’s seat as he was faced with a situation where he wanted to express that he cared. “Your legs are fine, it’s your arm that’s the problem. And probably your head, but that’s nothing new. Don’t think you’re getting out of any meetings any time soon. Anyway, how’d you know it was me?” 

“It’s a new magical power she’s picked up.” Dani said seriously. “She can see through walls.” 

Duck almost would’ve believed it, if Aubrey’s giggling hadn’t given her away. “Yeah sure.” He said wryly. “Did I mention? I got a vision last night that said you two are both going to grow old and die in a small town in Alaska where they don’t have any plumbing.” 

“Touché…” Aubrey responded archly. “And actually, your ranger boots are much heavier than anyone else’s, so I always hear you coming. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, and pardon my French, but what the hell is wrong with you!” 

She said it with such force that Duck was momentarily stunned, if nothing else because he hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was talking about. 

“Me?” He asked incredulously. “I didn’t attack you, it was the abomination! I haven’t done jack shit except talk to my cat all morning.” 

“Exactly!” She responded dramatically, slipping - whether on purpose or on accident - into her accusatory Poirot voice. 

“Pardon?” Duck asked, at this point well and truly lost. 

“She’s just annoyed because you and Indrid have been moping around each other in circles for the past few weeks, and she wants to do an Iron Chef group date before raspberries go out of season.” Dani provided calmly, not even looking up from her project. 

“I… That’s, uh, that’s not what you think.” Duck said, as forcefully as he was able given how taken aback he felt by the abrupt change in conversation, and how the wound in his heart was feeling as if it had been jostled abruptly and was beginning to ache all over again. “It’s not like that.”

“Of course it is.” Said Aubrey insistently. “He likes you, you like him, you need to kiss him on the mouth so I can crush you both with this new pie recipe I’m working on. And so I can be happy for you, I guess.”

“It’s not like that.” Duck repeated, his tone falling flat as the ache inside him became harder to control. “And don’t go bothering him with the idea. You’re going to get the same response, and he’s gone through enough.” 

“It is like that though!” Aubrey continued brashly, clearly not willing to let this go despite the look Dani was now giving her. “And what he’s going through is just the fact that you’re both being idiots and wallowing all over town instead of talking to each other! Trust me, I know it’s a scary thing to do. When Dani and I finally talked it over, I was terrified. But there’s literally, and I mean literally, no better feeling than the one you get once you’ve done it.” 

The pain in Duck’s chest was starting to burn and become unbearable, and it made him feel somehow defensive and angry. As if he knew he desperately needed to leave the conversation before it got any worse. 

“Look Aubrey, I’m real happy for you and Dani. I am.” He said, with forced calmness but no small amount of obvious displeasure in spite of it. “And I’ll bet you’re right about that soulmates thing and how good it feels. But that’s not something I’m ever going to get, and I’m positive about that. So don’t you go bringing it up again, because I don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want Indrid hearing it either… And I fucking mean that, you know. Don’t you dare.” 

The two girls both looked shocked, and Duck got a small taste of the regret he was going to feel later for snapping at his friends. But for now all he knew was that he needed to get the hell away from the subject, and out of the lodge in general, before he burnt up entirely. 

And so with no further ado, he turned on his heel and stormed down the hall, past the confused looks Barclay and Jake gave him from where they were trying to force a hot mug of tea into Indrid’s hands. And before he knew it he was outside, walking through the edge of the forest that surrounded the lodge, not really wanting to leave entirely - not when there was likely going to be an important meeting soon - but desperate to find a place he felt, for once, safe and alone. 

He trudged on longer than he thought he would, not really paying much attention to his actions beyond the fact that the movement burned up enough of his energy that it allowed his anxious mind to think. And before he knew it he couldn’t stop thinking. He thought about Aubrey and Dani, and how he really was genuinely happy for the two of them. He thought about the way they must feel, getting to be around each other as easily as they did, and how he couldn’t even imagine what that was like. He wondered if the warmth and glow that accompanied the times he’d gotten to spend with Indrid while they did absolutely nothing at all was even a tenth of the feeling of the real thing, and if he’d even be able to survive it. 

He thought about how he’d never have to worry about that. And then he began to cry. 

And before he knew it he couldn’t stop crying. 

The tears fell hot and useless from his face, his throat tight and painful. 

And at this point he finally stopped his walking, and sat down on a fallen sycamore branch, and let it all go. 

Crying had never come easily to Duck. As much as he occasionally felt the need to - the idea of a good cleansing cry sometimes being just what the doctor ordered - his tear ducts rarely if ever got the message, and he was often left to instead sit there in silence, with no way of outwardly expressing just how overwhelming things could get. 

Now though, it felt as easy as he imagined it must be for Meryl Streep when placed in front of a camera, and even if he could have stopped himself he hardly would have wanted to. It hurt, all of it, but hopefully he could let all the difficult emotions he’d been building up inside of him go all at once, and be a bit more useful and practical about everything they were facing than it felt like he had been lately. The tears hit the fallen leaves on the forest floor in a quick staccato pattern, and the keening whines he felt escape from him every so often bounced off the trees and further into the forest in a way that must have made him sound like a wounded animal, were anyone else likely to come this far out into the middle of nowhere. 

And then, all of a sudden, it became apparent that someone had. 

“Duck? Duck, where you hiding? I know it’s you out here.” 

The unmistakably solid timbre of Mama’s voice sounded out only a dozen yards or so in front of him, though the thick foliage of the deeper obscured him from her. Her timing was hardly impeccable, and Duck looked up with shock, wiping his runny nose on his hand for a moment before remembering he had a handkerchief in his pocket. 

“Yeah, I uh… Over here.” He began, cleaning himself up a bit and feeling more than a little embarrassed. “No, no, to your left!”

“Ah, there you are.” Mama said, stopping a bit to avoid a low hanging branch as she finally found her way towards him. “How you holding up, Duck? You know, there’s no shame in what you’re feeling. Whatever it is.” She continued, her tone as always just slightly difficult to parse. “I know I haven’t been as, uh, involved in things with you three as I’d like, lately. And I’m sorry for that. But it seems like I’ve missed more than just the monsters. Has… Did someone hurt you?” 

Mama was, frankly, hard to parse in general, and the way that she made so many of her decisions with a moral mind at the wheel while steadfastly refusing to showboat that reasoning had a tendency to make the more cynical among them suspicious. As Leo often enjoyed remarking, plenty of people with a strong code of ethics were just cannibals who wanted you to be impressed with how they used their napkin. And yet even so, Duck had taken to trusting Mama from very early on, in spite of or perhaps even because of the fact that even the way she spoke seemed to hold layers of context and secrets no one was privy to. Most people were like that, he reasoned, if you bothered to contextualize them outside of the short span of time you’d be spending with them. If anything, Mama was just being more honest about it. 

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.” He responded to her question after a moment’s pause. “It’s… Uh, I’m sure you know plenty about soulmates, right?”

Mama nodded silently and made herself at home on a branch nearby, clearly understanding that Duck needed a moment to gather his thoughts, and that interrupting to comment wouldn’t help any. 

“Well,” Duck continued, “I have one, don’t know if I ever mentioned it. And I found mine.” 

“Well now,” Mama said, a smile now crossing her weathered face. “That sounds like nothing but good news to me. Congrats, Duck. But then what’s all the weepiness about?” 

“I’m not weeping, I’m just crying. I’m fully in charge of the situation.” Duck said testily. “And it’s because, well, uh… He - it’s a he, pretty sure you knew that about me though. Anyway, he doesn’t, um…. Well I love him. But he doesn’t love me back. Like that. Or maybe at all.” 

Mama, on hearing his words, stayed shockingly still for a moment - to an extent that Duck began to worry slightly that he wasn’t entirely sure what narcolepsy looked like, and had never once heard of Mama having it, but it would be just his luck wouldn’t it? Just before he worked up the nerve to intervene, however, she responded. 

“That’s just… not possible.” She said, her tone now more confused than anything else. “I don’t have one myself, but I’ve learned a thing or two in my travels over the years, and seen plenty of my friends find theirs. And I can tell you that the love of a soulmate isn’t something that gets forced on its subject unwillingly by some sort of… I don’t know, cosmic hand or nothing. It’s more like it’s born into them as they’re created, before the flow of the universe even gets its say. It’s not a characteristic addition to a creature, it’s their most basic self. Like the…. How should I say this? I’m not a great hand at the whole metaphor thing. But if most of our attributes and likes and dislikes are seasoning and flavor, the love you have for your soulmate is the meat closest to the bone where it’s sweetest. Or maybe even the bone itself.” 

“Yeah, well I guess he’s a vegetarian or something.” Duck said morosely, picking at a rock that had stubbornly wedged itself in his hiking boot and throwing it vindictively into the trees. 

“He was the cut of meat in that metaphor, and you knew it.” Mama said shortly. “Anyhow, I can promise you that whoever this guy is he’s pretty much incapable of not loving you, whether or not he might want to.”

“That’s the other thing, though.” Duck continued, undeterred in his depression despite Mama’s words. “Why doesn’t he want to? What’s wrong with me? I j-“ 

“Now you listen here, Duck,” Mama cut him off abruptly, “I can’t have you doing that kind of thinking. I’ll be honest with you, your soulmate might be aware of all these laws of the universe we’re talking about here, and actually I’d even say it’s likely. And maybe he’s chosen to fight it all anyway - which makes no damn sense to me, but what can you do… You know, there’s pretty much nothing you can be certain of, when you’re as mortal as we are. And those of us in the monster-fighting business know better than most that people only see what they think is out there, and won’t hear something if they’re not willing to understand it. And yet through all the subjectivity and uncertainty of being alive, when you’re given a soulmate you’re suddenly told that right there is the one thing in the world you can always rely on without question. Now that’s a scary thought, if you give it a moment. Trusting effort and intention? That I can do. But trusting perfection? That feels impossible. But that doesn’t matter, because I want you to chew something over, and I’ll leave you alone after I say it. I’m sure you’ve got a lot on your mind just now… Just remember that a belief can be honest without being true.“

And almost as abruptly as she’d arrived, Mama stood up, dusted off the seat of her pants with far more grace and confidence than most people in a similar position would’ve been able to infuse into the action, and disappeared into the woods in the vague direction of the Lodge. Duck sat there for a moment, feeling almost stunned by the unexpected turn his day had taken, and more than a little confused as to just what it was that Mama had been trying to communicate. He was uncertain whether he ought to just get back to crying, and was beginning to wonder if he could, when a different but still familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. 

Only this one was even farther away. And this one was screaming. 

********

Aubrey had fucked up. She knew she had, even before Dani had given her that trademark look of hers after Duck had stormed out of their room. He’d never been the type to lose his temper very obviously - and a good thing too, because she always had been. They couldn’t have two fireballs on the team, no pun intended. 

Or maybe intended a bit. 

But anyhow, that conversation had been perhaps the most angry she’d ever seen Duck get - and while her opinion that those two clowns needed to get their asses in gear before Duck died of old age hadn’t faltered in the slightest, she still felt terrible for being the cause. Even worse than she normally might have, in fact, because just the other day she’d read half an article in Cosmo Magazine while standing in the grocery line with Barclay and Dani, and she’d learned that anger was just fear turned inward. Or maybe on its way out? She’d admittedly been skimming. 

Regardless, the conversation had apparently scared Duck, in a way that felt much more real than all the nervous jokes he’d ever made before they went into a big battle. She’d seen him scared to die, but scared to live? Scared to live in the way he thought he was going to have to? It was heartbreaking, and perhaps she even found it a tad terrifying herself. She had made plenty of odd and wonderful friends in her life, and especially in the last few years. But Duck, in spite of his very specific boundaries and his almost prodigious capacity for grumbling, had nearly the moment she’d met him proven that he was the most reliable of them all. And while he wasn’t a risk-taker or a daredevil or an all-nighter type of guy… if she only got one phone call, she had for months known the number she’d choose by heart. 

So, almost as soon as he’d left, Aubrey had moved to follow Duck. Her efforts had been made difficult by Dani - who had tried to insist she stay in bed and rest for once - but after Aubrey had threatened to just go barefoot if she didn’t get help tying her shoes, she’d finally made it out the door. Duck had made a quick exit and was far ahead of her by that point, but thanks to her familiarity with the sound of his footsteps and a little bit of third eye cheating, she’d been able to track him down to The Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Forest, West Virginia. 

When she’d arrived, though, she’d slowed her pace before halting altogether, the vision in front of her distressing. Because there Duck sat, hunched over on a fallen tree branch, crying his eyes out in a way that felt somehow so raw it might just make the phrase literal. She’d never seen him so much as emotionally sniffle before, not even when they’d watched Up together a few months ago, and she’d always assumed since then that despite his obvious bumbling humanity he must be made of stone. But that was apparently and unfortunately not true, because now - muffled only slightly by the rustling leaves overhead as they cast dancing shadows across his hunched back and that jacket he loved so much - Duck sat, his head almost between his knees and his hands slightly covering his ears, sobbing as if his heart had been broken. 

It was an awful thing to witness, especially given how guilty she’d already been feeling, and Aubrey was about to work up the courage to interrupt him when suddenly his head shot up as if he’d heard a noise. Her heart stuttered in her chest for a moment, worried she’d been caught out, before she realized that his gaze was pointed in a direction entirely separate from her own. And so she sat completely still - nervous and slightly puzzled - for a moment or two, until Mama pushed her way through the brush and approached Duck with a very calm and intentional gait. 

She must have followed after him when he left the lodge, Aubrey realized, which in embarrassing hindsight meant she’d likely been tracking her most of the way rather than Duck. 

The two began to talk, Mama’s warm voice not quite making it to Aubrey, and even Duck’s deeper tones only occasionally reaching her where she crouched behind two trees that forked dramatically away from each other. He sat there for a moment, silently listening to whatever Mama had to say and cleaning himself up a bit with a handkerchief Aubrey knew his mom had embroidered for him decades ago. He’d shown it to her once, just after their Up viewing in fact, after he’d silently passed it to her only a few minutes in when the first signs of tears had begun to well up in her eyes. It had a little lavender sewed into the corner, and the initials D.N., and he always kept in his back pocket despite rarely having a use for it and regularly getting a well-intentioned ribbing from his friends for having it. 

And then after a moment or two of this, he spoke. 

“I’m sure you know plenty about soulmates, right?” He asked, the soft uncertainty of his voice barely carrying it far enough to reach Aubrey’s ears. The tone he was taking now was entirely different from the one he’d had with her earlier, and it was so interesting to observe that it took her a moment to realize she should probably feel bad for eavesdropping. Even if it was only 50% eavesdropping if you thought about it. Certainly not bad enough to stop, but enough to add a little more guilt to her pile. 

“…I love him,” Duck said then, and Aubrey was surprised by how easily it came out. How long had he known? Why hadn’t he done anything? “But he doesn’t love me back.” Duck continued. “Like that. Or maybe at all.”

She was entirely shocked by that point. Not so much with what he said as with the definitive certainty with which he said it. It was hardly the typical nervousness of someone in love, and instead it felt as factual as if he’d been delivering particularly terrible news about the weather. But what made him think that? There was no way that could possibly be true, not with the dopey looks Indrid gave Duck almost constantly, whether or not people could see him. Not with the way he followed him around like a puppy, and seemed so much more comfortable and at ease when Duck was beside him. 

Mama said something she couldn’t hear, and while she continued speaking for a while, judging by Duck’s body language she was doing little to convince him of her point. 

“Yeah, well I guess he’s a vegetarian or something.” He said. 

Well that made no fucking sense. Duck paused again then, listening politely, his expression not hopeful but still attentive. 

“That’s the other thing, though.” He continued finally. “Why doesn’t he want to? What’s wrong with me?” 

Aubrey began to feel more and more guilty about what she was overhearing, and about the way their conversation earlier had gone. These might have been the same things Duck would have said to her - with the exception of the weird bit about vegetarianism, probably. But the rest of it, Duck’s fears and whatever stupid mistake Indrid was making, all might have been shared with her if she’d let her friend talk first and saved her ass-kicking instinct for later. There was clearly more going on than she had thought, and she hadn’t yet earned the right to know about it. 

She turned around then and crept away as quietly as possible, not wanting to infringe on his privacy any more than she already had. Hopefully Duck would let her be there for him, when he came back to the lodge. Hopefully they could get this all worked out. 

And just then, as the roof of Amnesty Lodge became once more visible through the forest, she heard a crack from somewhere behind her, though it was hard to tell just where with the odd way the noise echoed across the trees. It was more than just to sound of a branch snapping in two, but it was also somehow exactly the same - only deeper and somehow more solid, and more terrifying than she had any reason to believe it to be just then. 

The reason came to her quickly enough, however, as she turned around. 

There, only a few yards behind her, a tree was splitting itself in half between the cracks in its bark, as if the grooves and lines they cut across its surface were somehow seams rather than indentations. It shuddered and shook with the energy of the motion, the leaves of its branches rustling violently against each other overhead, and after only a moment of that visual and the terrifying noise that accompanied it, something began to emerge from inside the trunk itself. Peeling apart the tree with no regard to at all given to its splintered remains, the abomination she’d only barely escaped alive mere hours before was once more in front of Aubrey, wrapping its talonous claws around the edges of the wood and thrusting them aside to create an opening large enough for it to step through. 

It stood there, silent and hulking for a moment, the same pattern from the shadows of leaves of other trees above them dancing across its skin. 

Only they weren’t quite. With as much proximity as Aubrey now had, and in such a better lit space than she’d previously seen the abomination, she now noticed that it wasn’t just the natural obscurity of shadows that made the creature ever so slightly difficult to pin down. Where most things had a defined outline, in some way or another, the abomination in front of her had nothing of the sort. Not in the sense that it was amorphous, because its physical build seemed constant, but rather that the edges where its unnatural frame met the world seemed to constantly shift and change, as if her eyes refused to see it in its entirety. And it was only where shards of light peered through the ceiling of foliage above her and struck down on the creature that she saw it clearly and was able to piece together its form. 

The same form that had cocked its antlered head to one side, the drooping points of its rack hanging down from across its shoulder, as it raised a clawed hand in her direction. Looking for all the world like as she had spent her time figuring out something about it, it had given pause to understand something about her too. 

And then it began its approach. 

She screamed. It was supposed to have been Duck’s name, that was her intention. She needed all the help she could get. But it came out with no real clarity, and she could only hope - as she removed her enchanted knife once more from its place on her belt - that he had heard her and understood anyway. 

 

******** 

Indrid was dreaming, he was certain of it. For one thing, he was finding himself to be in at least seven different places at once - switching back and forth between farmer’s market and bookstore and park bench and coffee shop with a level of emotional comfort about the whole thing that only a dream could allow him. For another, everything was foggy around the edges, as if the people in charge of constructing the whole illusion weren’t being paid enough to create any sort of quality work for his periphery, the way a good vision would allow. 

And perhaps more important than all of this, Duck was there too. He had to be dreaming. 

In fact, Duck was not only there, but he seemed unaware that anything unfortunate had ever passed between them. He was laughing at something Indrid had said, really laughing with his head thrown back - first in the coffee shop, and then at the planetarium Indrid had always meant to find a reason to make them visit, and then in line during the evening rush at Leo’s store, and then knee high in a creek somewhere deep in the forest that Indrid didn’t even recognize at all, though he was sure Duck knew it like the back of his hand. 

And then, in all of these realities, and yet somehow not in the one that mattered, Duck leaned forward and kissed him once more. 

Only this kiss was nothing like their first. Their only one. The first had been fierce and solid, and had involved quite a lot of desperate handfuls of each other’s jackets and not nearly enough breath between them. This one, on the other hand, was light and beautiful. Not that Indrid had any reason to be picky, they both in their own unique ways had made him feel as if someone had taken a rather large melon-baller to his heart. But this one was lovely in the way that it felt like it had happened a hundred times before. Duck leaned forward, still smiling slightly at whatever it was they’d been talking about, and pressed a gentle and singular kiss to his lips. With no other agenda, it would seem, than to say I love you, and with the worry that plain English wouldn’t convey the feeling well enough. 

And then, in all of those realities, and yet somehow even more truly in the one that mattered, Duck began to disappear from him. He faded from view unevenly but entirely - a hand and then his chest and then his legs and so on - until only the kiss was left. 

And Indrid shut his eyes, so he didn’t have to know it. 

When he opened them again, he found that he was in the community area of the Amnesty Lodge, nearly buried under an obscene number of blankets that somehow did just slightly less than keep him warm. A fire crackled somewhere nearby - presumably the hearth, given that no likely futures contained any chance of the place burning down. And for a moment, everything was calm and empty. 

And then, in five seconds, most of the residents would burst through the door. 

Indrid saw their approach in his mind’s eye, though by the time he had worked out a vague idea as to what the fuss was all about, they had entered the building in earnest. Duck was carrying a violently angry Aubrey - who was bleeding both from the previously bandaged wound on her arm and a brand new one that cut decisively through the leg of her favorite pants - and Dani followed close behind, giving reassurance and support and a touch of chiding with every new curse word her girlfriend threw out. She too was injured, though only slightly, a small and easily-healed cut running across her face, and a slight limp in her gait. And so was Jake, though he seemed to have shrugged off the broken nose he’d sustained and was attempting to reset it with the professionalism of someone who’d had one a few times before. 

Duck, luckily, was unharmed, and he set Aubrey down gently on the sofa across from Indrid, his back to him and with no indication at all that he even saw him there. 

“Shit, Aubs” his slightly muffled but ever-familiar voice cut through the cacophony like the beam of a flashlight through the darkness. “If you were excited about the scar on your shoulder you’re going to love the one on your leg, I’ll tell you that much. That’s a real doozy of a hit you took.” 

“Ugh, fuck.” Aubrey complained as she readjusted herself clumsily. “Could’ve been worse, thanks for pushing me out of the way.” 

And on hearing this, Indrid suddenly caught the tail end of a handful of futures as they disappeared from likeliness entirely. Futures where Duck took the hit instead, and where he took several. A few futures where the other residents of the lodge hadn’t been outside at the right time to come to their aid, and he took too many hits to come back from. 

He pushed them aside quickly, knowing far too well what lingering on any of that might do to him. 

Instead, he focused on attempting to gain a larger picture of the present, without interrupting anyone as they all gathered around the first aid kit Barclay and Ned had procured and began to help each other. 

Mama, through everyone else’s grousing and whining, was the first to provide relevant information. 

“Well, at least we’ve got some small sense of what we’re dealing with now folks.” She said, that bone deep tiredness she did her best to hide bubbling its way to the surface just a bit. 

“Yeah,” Aubrey agreed, seeming a bit lost in thought. “Actually, shit, I noticed something. I forgot about it during all the fighting, but I think this is definitely important. I’m almost positive it’s invisible in the dark. It seems like it hates natural light especially, but it also took out the lightbulbs at the diner and in front of Leo’s, remember? And when it appears, it’s harder to see even if it’s just in the shadows. So what if it’s not just in danger when its seen, what if it’s more vulnerable?” 

Ned looked up from where he and Barclay had pinned down Jake and were attempting to wrestle some antiseptic on him, abandoning their work as his eyes suddenly became alight with interest. “Well allow me to take it one step further, then.” He said. “If it’s controlling the lightbulbs in the area, what if it’s bringing the rain too? That seems like it’s the closest the thing could get to keeping out the sun, besides some sort of eternal night time.” 

Mama nodded at them both, her arms folded pensively. “That would certainly explain why it’s been raining the wrong way too. If you’re going to develop some sort of evolutionary ability to fake a storm, you’re going to do it in a way that will fool just about every place you could try it. It was just bad luck that our abomination decided to mess with the only town in America where it rains upwards.” 

“Yeah, not to derail the conversation,” Aubrey cut in, “but what’s the deal with that anyway?” 

“Hell if we know.” Barclay said, without even looking up from his determined work on Jake’s nose. “I only noticed it a decade or so ago, could’ve been happening for years before that even. Just a weird Kepler thing, I think.” 

“I think this place has been odd as all hell for a lot longer than we’ve been around.” Dani agreed sagely. 

“Be that as it may,” Mama continued, “we need to return to the question at hand. We know what it does, but what does it want?” 

“What’s it hungry for?” Duck spoke up, his tone and expression dark. 

And this, somehow, was the same question, but phrased just perfectly enough that it unlocked something for Indrid. Something he’d been missing the whole time. 

“Secrets!” He whispered suddenly, his voice more hoarse than he’d expected, though he shouldn’t have been surprised. “Secrets.” He repeated, this time with more force. 

The group turned to look at him, all apparently surprised to see he was even awake. Or perhaps even that he was there at all, the details of his arrival were more than a little fuzzy to him. 

Everyone, that was, except for Duck, whose face remained expressionless and grim as he looked resolutely anywhere else. 

And Indrid could do little but press on, though it hurt. 

“I believe it wants secrets.” He said, his voice returning slowly to him. “That’s the common thread between the victims. Sharon watched Dale drop that burger, and knew that he’d been breaking food safety laws. Mr. Brisby was spreading sensitive gossip around to people who shouldn’t know it…” 

“I was, uh… I had just learned some things I shouldn’t have, right before it attacked me in the woods.” Aubrey interjected helpfully, if a bit rightfully ashamed. 

“And the deer.” Duck cut in, his tone still monotonous. “Sheriff Zeke said some kids were out goofing off in the woods, causing trouble with some illicit substances. The deer must have seen them at it, they were real close to the trail. Seems our monster isn’t too discerning with its victims.” 

The group sat silently for a moment, this being the sort of epiphany that required time to sink in. But Ned was never willing to let a silence sit for long. 

“Oh!” He shouted excitedly, breaking through everyone’s thoughts like an auger through a frozen lake. “That’s why our pal Indrid here has been at the scene of almost every crime. This thing must love you, all you do is look through people’s dirty laundry, so to speak.” 

Indrid bristled at that, a bit. “There’s a touch more to it than that, you know… But I concede your point, that makes an unfortunate amount of sense.” 

He looked back to Duck, then, though his gaze was not met in the slightest. And while the man he loved wasn’t willing to do much more than glare sternly at a spot a few feet to his right, Indrid found he could hardly blame him. As if he hadn’t done enough, it now seemed he ought to add his complicity in Sharon’s death to the pile of debts he owed Duck. 

He just hoped, against all odds, he’s somehow be given the chance to repay him. 

“Well,” Mama said, a new edge to her voice that Indrid couldn’t quite place, “I guess we know what we have to do now.” 

Indrid, for one, didn’t have the faintest clue what she meant by this. But by the looks of everyone in the room who was willing to express an emotion at all, he seemed to be in the minority on this one. 

And in fact, what was truly odd was that they were all looking at him. 

“He’s not going to like it though…” Said Dani, unhappily. 

“Not a bit.” Agreed Aubrey. 

“We’ll need someone to keep an eye on him,” said Barclay, “and make sure he doesn’t try to sneak back and see… Well, you know. It’ll probably have to be you, Aubrey. You’re not going to be doing any of the fighting here, in that condition.” 

“I’ll go too.” Said Dani. “Keep them from killing each other.” 

And before Indrid got the chance to ask just what the hell had happened to their seemingly linear conversation, Duck got to it first. 

“What on the green earth are you guys talking about?” He demanded with the first amount of actual engagement he’d yet shown in the conversation. “Who’s doing what?” 

“It’s Indrid, Duck.” Mama said gently. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to send him away. Get some distance between him and this abomination, and hopefully buy us some time before the next attack.” 

“Yeah, it might help if we don’t have a walking feast constantly tempting that thing everywhere it goes.” Barclay elaborated helpfully. 

“No.” Said Duck, with finality. “You can’t just send him away like that. What if he… You can’t just…” And then he turned to Indrid, their eyes meeting for the first time since Duck had pulled their faces together on the top of that mountain and made a leap of faith Indrid wished he could have saved him from. 

And he saw something die in the familiar gaze he’d seen a hundred times before. A light that was extinguished, in a way that seemed as permanent as if it had been a flame. 

“Ok.” Duck said. “If that’s what’s best, then he should go... I don’t know what I was saying.” 

Any arguments Indrid might have made against his decisions being made for him died just as Duck’s interest in his staying did. And as Duck turned away, his face became once more a blank mask of disinterest - although Aubrey’s conversely looked pained, and she turned to Indrid with a glare that startled him. Even if he had offended Duck the night before, he’d never expected that the man would so quickly find him unbearable. Were they really to a point that they had to divide up friends? Would he be so easily abandoned? 

“Aubrey, Indrid, and Dani.” Mama addressed them now with the full power of the authority she seemed to naturally possess. “Y’all are going to have to take the Winnebago out of town. Doesn’t matter where, just as long as it’s far from the perimeter. I’ll give you my card, and you can set yourself up somewhere decent and wait for us to let you know it’s safe.” 

It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation at hand that Aubrey didn’t even crack a joke about ordering too much room service, just then. Instead she nodded solemnly, and with that as some sort of odd bookend to the conversation everyone began to file off, the time for talking over and the time for action upon them. 

As Mama left to grab her card and a few supplies for the three of them, Aubrey and Dani helped Indrid rise from the couch, the cold air even where they were inside the well-heated lodge causing him to shiver almost instantly. Duck was the only one not to move at all, instead sitting where he had been all night and still staring as blankly as ever, now at his boots. 

“That Winnebago of yours better have the comfiest couch on earth,” Aubrey grumbled, “because I am about to crash harder than Herbie Fully-Loaded.” 

“Herbie never crashed.” Dani said, taking Indrid by the arm and gently leading the two of them outside. 

“Didn’t he at the beginning? Ah, let me have this one Dani.” Aubrey whined. “I’m tired.” 

The lights from the porch illuminated the night that had draped itself over the forest in front of them like a blanket in their absence, and a few stray moths flitted around them in a desperate and futile search for warmth that Indrid knew only too well. 

“No, I can’t talk to them.” He said, anticipating their next question without even needing to check forward and verify it. 

They shared in a chuckle together - and though it was half-hearted at best, and Aubrey was still giving him an odd look that felt like disapproval, the relative normalcy of it all was the first comforting thing he’d experienced in probably 24 hours. 

The storm door of the lodge swung open with a creak, then, and through it the rest of their group walked out into the dark to join them. Mama handed them her credit card and a disposable cell phone, with only a short warning as to using both responsibly. Ned and Barclay handed them each a sack lunch, hastily thrown together and largely consisting of off-brand lunchables, but it was the thought that counted. Jake gave them each a variation on a fist bump, adjusted for their comfort level with the concept, and made them all promise to stay safe out there. 

And Duck hung back, giving Aubrey and Dani a small smile, pretending Indrid didn’t exist at all. 

Indrid shivered, the wind cold and bitter despite the many layers he wore, which in all his life before would have been enough for temperatures like this. 

But nothing he’d ever had was enough now, it seemed. 

As Aubrey and Dani discussed more particulars with Mama, and the majority of the group drifted back inside, Indrid turned to his Winnebago, happy to return to the familiarity and relative solitude it promised. This, he understood. Him, his Winnebago, and a world full of terrifying futures, over which he had no real control. There was never going to be anything more than that. 

The cold was unrelenting, though, and he found that he could hardly lift a hand to press his glasses more firmly against his face without worrying that it would fly wildly and knock them off entirely. 

“Hey. Wait up, hey.” A far too familiar voice called from behind him. 

And Indrid stopped, close to the door of his camper now, half tempted to high-tail it inside rather than face the conversation that was sure to follow. But instead he turned and looked at Duck, who had apparently followed him down from the porch, entirely alone. 

Neither of them said a word, then. Instead they stood silently for a moment, only looking at each other, neither certain just what it was the other was trying to find. 

And then another shiver wracked Indrid’s body, causing him to tremble in a way that made him feel like the slightest breeze would knock him over. 

“Here.” Said Duck, breaking the silence at long last. And he took off the jacket, his favorite jacket, and handed it to Indrid. 

Indrid had looked at that jacket many times before. Admired what it looked like on Duck, and wondered how it would feel to put it on for just a moment. And to its credit, it felt as wonderful as he ever could have hoped. Whether it was the remainder of Duck’s body heat still trapped within its lining, or something else entirely, Indrid found that he was no longer cold at all as he slipped his arms into the sleeves and buttoned it up tight. 

But so much more significant than all of that, and so much more startling, was the way Duck handed it to him. He reached forward, the collar loop of it hung from his outstretched fingers. 

And there his hand was. Extended. Palm upward. As he offered help. 

Indrid noticed. And then he noticed that he noticed. And then he noticed that he had not, in fact, noticed anything for quite some time. The moments between then and the point at which he found himself firmly inside the Winnebago with Duck nowhere in sight were a bit of a blur. Aubrey and Dani had apparently shepherded him in, and he had no idea at all if he’d said anything to Duck after that. He had no idea if they’d even said goodbye. 

And suddenly the engine started, as Aubrey and Dani bickered up front about who would be the better long-haul trucker of the two of them, or something along those ridiculous lines. And Indrid realized that he didn’t know when, foresight or no, he might see Duck again. 

So he ran to the back of his camper, where his small bed met the rear window, and threw open the ancient drapes that hung from it. 

And there, outside, he saw the retreating back of Duck Newton - now without a jacket and instead only in the same shirt he’d word the day before. 

The day before. 

Duck approached the porch of the lodge again, walking slowly away from him as if there was nothing inside to hurry him. And as the Winnebago pulled away too, taking Indrid with it, he found himself wishing desperately that Duck would look back at him. Give him some sign of hope. Anything at all. 

“Please.” he whispered, his eyes not leaving Duck for a moment. “Please look.” 

He watched closely for as long as the dirt road that lead him away stretched on, straining to make sure that if Duck even turned his head once more in his direction, he would see it and know. 

But he did not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late, but around 9000 words to make up for it! Thanks as always to everyone who has left such kind comments, I look forward to reading them every time I update.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being so patient in waiting for this update! Hope you enjoy!

The slats of the ancient wooden bridge passed beneath the tires of the Winnebago with rhythmic repetition. 

Cla-clack. 

Through the enormous windows of the driver’s seat - where Dani sat steering patiently as Aubrey prattled on about this or that - the precarious construction of the canyon crossing stretched itself onward in a way that seemed endless, and the trees rushed toward and then past them on either side. Many with only their tips visible, given how high up the lone road out of town ventured. But every single one in the dense forest that flowed steadily below and around them seemed like a marker. Another point of distance between the three passengers and Kepler. 

Cla-clack. 

Indrid sat at the dining table - the same one, strangely, that he had sat at all those times before, as alien as it felt to him now - and did his best to think of nothing at all. 

The sun scattered rays of light through the overcast skies where it could, lighting small patches of the rushing forest below them at random. 

Cla-clack. 

Sundial Peak crested triumphantly over the swell of the trees, far off in the distance. Too far. It had a simple structural beauty to its form that Indrid only now noticed, when granted this new and entirely removed perspective. He had once sat on top of that. He had once shared that with - 

Cla-clack. 

And then suddenly, a curve in the road took them further into the mountain pass, the jutting rock face that so abruptly leapt into sight cutting off the very last view of Kepler, West Virginia. 

And the pavement was once more smooth. 

“Why don’t we stop at Sheetz?” Aubrey called back to him, her intention of cutting off his train of thought almost impossibly obvious. “There’s one at the rest stop in fifteen miles. You wouldn’t believe the weird shit you can buy there.” 

“You feel like a treat Indrid?” Dani chimed in. “They’ve got Big League Chew. And weird doughnuts. And I’ll bet they might have nog, even at this time of year. That place abides by no mortal laws.” 

Indrid nodded encouragingly - more for their sake than his - and noted with confusion that while Aubrey’s tone had been kind as ever, her expression was stern, and she picked absentmindedly at the freshly-wrapped cast on her arm while giving him a searching look that could almost be read as a glare. 

He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve it, from her perspective at least. But he could hardly disagree with the sentiment. In fact, he felt the same way. 

They had made their quick escape the night before, two of the three of them harboring secrets that would likely make the camper van they took shelter in look like nothing more than a deliciously large ravioli to the creature that hunted them. But as soon as they’d passed the border of the town they’d pulled to the side of the road, and had shared in the bonding experience of a fitful night’s sleep. And as the morning light had finally cut between the aged 70’s linoleum shutters into the kitchen of the Winnebago, none of them had even feigned any interest in trying to rest any longer. Instead they had participated in an almost entirely silent breakfast of pop tarts and black coffee, and had peeled out quickly from the alcove among the trees they’d tucked themselves into, now attempting to put actual distance between themselves and the friends they were leaving behind. 

The punishing discomfort of it all, however, had done nothing to distract Indrid from the terrible realization that he’d had - as always - far too late. It was his curse, it seemed, to harbor helpful knowledge at just the point when it became useless in the face of tragedy. And even between the ache of his back after having insisted on taking the couch and letting the girls have his bed, and the burns on his tongue after having chugged his coffee that morning (which had, it seemed to him, no apparent taste at all), he had found that the realization of the night before was still painfully and fatefully inescapable. 

Duck was… Duck was his soulmate. And he’d ruined their happiness before it had even begun. 

It was an odd and new form of torture, the way he felt now. Because he’d never believed in the sort of vague and eternal happiness that had always been promised to him by the very idea of a fated other half. And he still wouldn’t, if it had come from anyone but Duck. But suddenly the idea that he even could have tried for it, that he might have had Duck by his side for as long as the earth would let him, and that they might have given it their best shot together…. The attempt alone seemed more promising than any of the consistent comfort solitude had ever provided. 

But he’d fucked it all up. Of course he had. He’d hurt Duck, a man with very specific boundaries, who had somehow let Indrid of all people to pass by all the hard lines he drew and all the walls he put up. Who had let him experience the comfort of being at home and alone and safe but together. Like they both needed their space from the world, but they had discovered together that their space had room for just one more… And still, when Duck had finally been the one brave enough to take a risk and ask for what they both wanted, Indrid had trusted his fears more than he’d trusted his friend. And he’d hurt him, apparently even more than he’d thought. 

And what truly stung about all of it - the wound that was the freshest - was that Duck had inadvertently proven that Indrid had never been right about a single thing anyway, ever since the beginning. The hand that had reached across his chest and appeared to demand help since the day he was born had instead first made itself recognizable when it had been offering it. Duck had reached out, palm upward, and handed him his favorite jacket without hesitation - the jacket Indrid still wore now, and had refused to take off since. And in that small but meaningful gesture Indrid had finally seen the very thing he’d tried to avoid, and realized he’d never really seen it clearly before. 

Because that was what was so recognizable about Duck, in the end. Not really his hand itself. But the fact that between two worlds full of people constantly asking for his help, asking for more than he could give, asking him for things he didn’t even understand and placing blame on him when he couldn’t deliver… Duck, as if it were no trouble at all, had always offered to help. 

Duck was his soulmate. And he wasn’t sure if they’d even said goodbye. 

And he now realized that so many of the strange and dangerous and dramatic things he had seen in his lifetime - all the tragedies that had been caused and prevented in the name of love - hadn’t actually been acts of love in themselves, but acts of desperation at the thought of losing it. 

Just then, though, cutting through his melancholy like that magic knife of hers, Aubrey shrieked out an almost uselessly late warning that their turnoff was about to pass them by. And Dani - apparently having distracted her with a debate as to the spin-kickability of various birds - swerved the camper with a force that managed to make Indrid’s stomach drop, even with his full knowledge that all likely futures on the horizon allowed them to escape the incident unscathed. And by the time he had picked himself off of the couch, where he had fallen gracelessly in all the commotion, he found that she was calmly pulling them into one of the oversized parking spots in front of Sheetz, acting entirely unphased by the incident. 

Those girls…. They’d be the death of him. 

“Come on Indrid!” Aubrey called over her shoulder as she bounded out the door with what appeared to be genuine excitement. “If you don’t hurry they won’t have all the Shwirl toppings!” 

And with no small amount of grumbling, he followed behind her. 

A sterile air-conditioned breeze greeted him at the entrance, and between the unnaturally bright lighting, the cold tiles at his feet, and the untraceable and seemingly endless music that drifted vaguely through the aisles, he once more felt the familiar sensation of having been lifted from the real world he was so used to and placed into a complete stasis that would persist until he purchased his chips and exited the sliding doors once more. He had never been a fan of Sheetz, always finding them to be odd and almost eerily sanitized without quite feeling clean. But Ned, Duck, and Aubrey all had a fascination with the place that was almost catchable, and he began to wish he could go back to the moment two months ago when the trio had first promised they’d take him there as a group field trip. A moment he had forgotten almost the second it had ended, but now returned to him with a sense of nostalgia that was ever so slightly heartbreaking. 

Dani appeared out of nowhere, then - her ability to sense the outermost loops of his inevitable spiralling thoughts beginning to take on an almost unearthly quality - and shoved beneath his nose what would appear to be a cardboard box with a mound of dripping chocolate, whipped cream, M&Ms, and a whole variety of other things that almost entirely covered the cinnamon roll on the bottom.

“No thanks,” Indrid finally managed, after being momentarily mesmerized by the unnatural jiggling the odd confection made when in motion. “I’m, uh... not really hungry right now.” 

“I just spent seven dollars of Mama’s hard-earned money on this, so yes you are.” Dani said decisively. And that was that. 

Five minutes later, he found himself sitting on the curb of the parking lot with a plastic fork in hand and a nosey girl on either side of him. 

“Pass the Jasta, you soda hog.” Dani said with a grin, and Aubrey - her own Shwirl somehow twice the size of Indrid’s - paused in her attempts to wrestle her fork into the chaos of cream and sugar to hand over the single bottle of soda they had insisted the three of them needed to share. (“It’s part of the experience” Aubrey had claimed, and Dani had only nodded sagely without elaborating.) 

“So Indrid,” Aubrey said as she struggled to scoop what she considered to be a healthy amount of all of her ingredients onto a single forkful, “why do you live alone?” 

“Aubrey!” Dani cut in urgently, reaching behind Indrid’s back to lightly smack her girlfriend’s head, “You promised we wouldn’t bug him about this.” 

“I promised I wouldn’t bring that one thing up,” Aubrey defended herself, and giving such meaning to those three nondescriptive words they could almost have been verbally capitalized. “I didn’t promise him we wouldn’t talk to Indrid at all. I’m just making conversation!” 

Indrid felt he was lacking in some essential context for the exchange, but before he could begin to piece together any theories, Aubrey returned her attention to him. 

“Really though, why do you live alone?” She asked. 

“Why do you want to know?” He responded, still confused. 

 

“I’m just making conversation, what’s with the third degree?” Aubrey said testily. “Jeeze Louiseus, as Duck would say.”

Indrid paused for a moment to collect his thoughts, having never been asked that question as directly as he was now. “I just… You know, some people actually prefer to be alone.” 

“Not you though.” Said Aubrey. And she wasn’t asking. 

“Well I wouldn’t choose it if I didn’t prefer it.” Indrid countered. 

“Yes you would.” Aubrey replied with the same confident finality. Dani shot her a warning look. 

“No I wouldn’t.” Indrid said, beginning to feel frustrated. “I’m like this because… I’m by myself on purpose, because I like to spend time alone. That’s not crazy, lots of people share that preference.” 

“Of course people like it.” Aubrey conceded. “I need alone time sometimes, and so does Dani. And Duck needs a lot of it, cause that’s just how he is. But you don’t enjoy it that much, I know you way too well to let that bullshit slide Indrid. We all do.” 

And Indrid felt suddenly backed into a metaphorical corner, not quite sure how he’d gotten there so quickly, and with no obvious means of escape. “Well, if I’m so isolated then how could you know me well enough to say that?” He asked, desperate and a bit angry, though he was unsure just why. “I’m alone a lot, and I choose to be that way. I get to make that decision. Loneliness isn’t something someone else can force me into, I’m alone and it’s my choice.” 

“Why though?” Asked Aubrey. 

“Because it doesn’t really hurt if it’s on purpose!” 

Well…. He hadn’t meant to say that. 

Aubrey looked at him with a kind of sadness in her eyes that was somehow, luckily, not as pitying as he would’ve expected. And though he didn’t dare move, he was sure Dani was giving him the same look on his other side. 

“Do you mind if I hug you?” Aubrey asked. And when he nodded minutely, both of the girls wrapped an arm around his shoulders and leaned in for a moment, pulling away just in time so that the overwhelming and confusing comfort he hadn’t expected to feel that morning didn’t cause the tears to spill from where they’d gathered in his eyes and betray him by streaking below his glasses. 

“It doesn’t have to hurt at all, you know.” Aubrey continued, returning once more to the food she had briefly abandoned in favor of getting her point across. “You should trust us more, we’ve all got your back. I know that’s tough to believe though. Maybe just start with Duck, and work outward from there.” 

And she finally, with much ado, took an enormous bite. 

***** 

Duck was real fucking miserable. 

That in itself was not odd. It was an emotion he was familiar with - one he even found comfortable when it was about nothing serious. Being happy was all well and good, but there was no way to tell just how happy you were if you didn’t take advantage of your chance to grumble about the poor weather or the general incompetence of your fellow drivers every now and again. Complaining was an art form, and Duck considered himself a real master of his element. 

But this misery in particular was one he couldn’t find any joy in. It had continued to rain for the three solid days since his friends had left town, and he hadn’t been able to muster up so much as a curse to the heavens for Juno’s benefit when she had repeatedly asked him what was wrong. In fact, all he had managed to do was sit at his desk, model ship in hand, and wait for anything of note to happen. Anything at all… But nothing had, and subsequently he had finished two and a half new boats - which was for him a level of productivity he had never bothered to expect of himself. However, while they looked nearly perfect they had all lacked any kind of heart or personality, and for that reason he had been vaguely considering if the idea of floating them down the river to symbolize his hopes and dreams as they vanished into the unknown would still technically be littering. 

The rain, for its part - not even having the decency to be interesting no matter how often he checked it - continued to beat upwards against the smudged windows of the ranger station. And time did nothing to heal his wounds at all. 

He still thought about it, more frequently than he’d like. That night at the top of Sundial Peak. Every second between the moment he knew and the moment he made the decision he so regretted. And now, even more strangely, the way Indrid had acted the last time he saw him. The man had been shivering uncontrollably as he’d walked away for what felt like it might be the last time, and Duck - hurt and defensive as he was - hadn’t been able to convince himself that he hadn’t noticed. So he’d run after him, and handed him his jacket, and had meant to say goodbye…. Only he hadn’t gotten the chance. Not because there wasn’t time, but somehow because there wasn’t space. When he’d given away his coat, Indrid had looked at him in the strangest way, and held the fabric of it to his chest with the same tight-fisted grip Duck had seen him use so many times before, and a few moments of silence had passed between them wherein nothing had been said at all. And despite the fact that he regretted that too, now, he knew in the moment it hadn’t felt like the conversation they were having was something that should be interrupted with words. 

Which was, of course, ridiculous. 

 

And now the only man he was ever meant to truly love had come into and left from his life with so much speed it felt like he had hardly taken a second to appreciate the small amount of happiness he had gotten from it, as distracted as he had been by the fact that he’d selfishly wanted more. 

The days passed like that, one after another. He went to work, and did his best not to transfer his low mood to Juno - as much to avoid her questions as anything else, because he didn’t think he could explain anything about his current situation and be left with any dignity to spare at all. And when he finished his shift he went home, and petted Nemo, and tried to ignore the empty space on his coat rack where his favorite jacket had once hung, and tried not to wonder how his friends were doing and if one of them in particular was missing him at all. He’d check his phone for any voicemails, even though the ones from Aubrey were brief and confusingly tangential and were growing distressingly farther apart. And then he’d go to sleep without dreaming. 

Until one night, he did. 

He had closed his eyes to the blue light of the moon where it peeked between the slats of his shutters and into his darkened bedroom. And he opened them to that special kind of sunlight that only reaches you deep in the heart of the forest. The one that all the flora seems to reach for, as the rustling leaves jostle for space in the wind overhead, and the whole world seems to be basking in the glow. 

And it was then that he knew he wasn’t dreaming at all. 

For one thing, the detail was far too great for his mind to have conjured up. And for another, there was a sense of familiarity to his surroundings that seemed to color many of his visions. Not quite like he’d been there before, but like he knew he would. A sort of prejà vu. More specifically than that, even, was the sense that he’d had this vision before, only in a slightly different way. As if his decisions in the interim might have changed the details, but the end result was destined to be the same. 

And so, already almost certain of what he would see, Duck cast his eyes around the forest surrounding him. 

And, of course, he saw the abomination. 

This time, unlike the previous one that was slowly coming back to his distant memory, the creature was not lurking in the shadows. Rather, it was just now stepping from the splintered remains of what had once been an undoubtedly beautiful tree. It was just like Aubrey had described to him after she had been attacked in the woods, and he found that he was irrationally and disproportionately angry at the destruction the creature was causing in his forest with seemingly no remorse. Certainly this wasn’t the most pressing matter at hand just then, but those were some fucking nice trees, and they took hundreds of years to grow like that. Who did this guy think he was, anyway? 

Unfortunately, it was at that point that he remembered just who, precisely, it really was he was dealing with. And with his healthy sense of fear returning, and a significant amount of his head start already having been lost, Duck ran off into the forest. 

If he knew where he was, and he flattered himself to think that he probably did, Sundial Peak was still very much within sprinting range - Chosen One stamina or no. And though he couldn’t quite remember how his vision had ended the last time he’d had it, he still got an almost cosmically-sourced sense that to reach the top was his best chance for survival. 

So he ran, tripping gracelessly over roots and branches, luckily never quite losing his footing. And he heard the familiar splintering sound of the creature in pursuit - apparently too slow or too lazy to follow on foot. 

All those cool-ass trees, ripped right in two…. 

His anger at the waste of it all only gave him the energy to run faster, and before he knew it he was at the base of the scramble to the top, and then he was halfway there, and then he was cresting the peak. 

And then he paused, in spite of himself. 

He had no reason to think the scenery would have changed since the last time he saw it. That was one of the great things about nature, after all. There was never any need for a redesign. But for some reason he had hoped that - even if he was still stuck, emotionally, at the edge of that cliff at almost midnight nearing two weeks ago - the environment would’ve done some of the moving on for him. 

Unfortunately, however, it all looked painfully the same in the daylight. And even if a deer might have eaten a bit of the flowers here, and a squirrel had recently made a new nest there, the overall visage was such that as he picked up his pace once more and ran toward the edge he could almost imagine there would be someone there waiting for him. 

But, of course, he was alone. And so he turned to face the abomination, with no earthly idea how he ought to escape the situation he’d put himself in - though an idea he couldn’t even give form to tickled at the back of his mind. And as the monster slowly dragged its massively hulking frame toward him, cocking its head to one side like it was observing something delicious, and opened its mouth slightly… 

It rang. 

It rang? 

Yes, it was certainly ringing, Duck realized - so thrown off by the noise that the fear of the moment vanished almost completely. In fact, not only was it ringing, but it was ringing in the distance, and in a familiar way. The sort of way he felt obligated to deal with, somehow. 

It was… That was his landline. 

And then he suddenly blinked, and found himself awake in his own bedroom, tangled and sweaty among the sheets like he hadn’t really experienced since he was a little kid. Sure, he’d had his bad dreams, and even worse visions. But rarely were they so physical. 

And slowly, perhaps even cautiously, he began to assess his surroundings. 

It was four in the morning, it seemed. He knew this with no thanks to the alarm clock by his bed - its display having been blank for months since the batteries had worn out, and his internal clock being so well ingrained he hadn’t even bothered to replace them - but rather because the birds outside were chirping in the careful way they tended to only in the early hours when they woke. As if they too were alone, and wanted to know that someone else was out there. And even though the sun had yet to arrive and keep him company, Duck felt certain that the daylight waiting to greet him in an hour or two would do little to distract him from the emptiness that had burrowed inside of him and made a home in his heart. 

It was only now that he noticed it, and probably only due to the hour. Four in the morning was always a very specific time, one that felt slightly more sacred than all the others. It was the point at which all the night owls were finally resting and all the morning birds were not yet quite awake. The same time Paul Simon invoked every time Juno’s mixtape played in his car, and started his day off with Peace Like a River. A point at which those who were still lucid and conscious were likely so for a reason, and a point at which there was very little to distract the waking from their place in the universe. At four AM there was nothing but you and the stars and a world that almost entirely didn’t know you existed. And although that was always true, really, it was at four in the morning that there was no longer anything to hide behind. 

And Duck had, for the first few decades of his life, only ever enjoyed that feeling. He’d never felt that empyrean urge to make something grand of himself, the way so many of his classmates had. Rather, he’d always enjoyed the idea that he was one small piece of something beautiful and far larger than himself. Now, though, he was struck with the difficult and almost breathtaking reality that the world and the trees and the leaves and the insects that crawled on them had begun to look like almost nothing at all when he didn’t have the one person he wanted to share in them with. 

The same moon that had lulled him to sleep still flushed through his shutters in sheets of blue, illuminating his bedroom, and beyond that his living room, and beyond that his kitchen. And the glow of it bathed the scene with a sense that it all came from a painting he’d never seen before but knew by heart. The needle of his record player still bumped uselessly against the label of the James Taylor album he’d had on the night before, though his attention had been lost to it the second You Can Close Your Eyes had hit him like an unexpected punch in the gut. And when he got up to remove it, he saw that his collection of paperback poetry was still out of order, from the last time he’d hastily shoved the Cavafy between a copy of Thomas A. Clarke and the cheap wood of his bookshelf, after inadvertently having hurt Indrid with it. And beyond that, his coat rack was still empty. 

And though he’d always enjoyed his alone time, he was - for the first time in his life - truly lonely. 

It was an experience he’d never had before. And a small part of him was aware enough to be grateful for that, at least. Because the feeling of it was nothing short of awful. 

And then the phone rang once more. 

The caller, it seemed, was undeterred by the late hour and by having been ignored the first time. And perhaps it was only because he was already standing, or his curiosity at the rudeness it took to call so early, or the vulnerability of the hour itself. Or even all three. But Duck shuffled apprehensively to the receiver on his kitchen wall, and answered. 

“Hello?” 

There was only silence. 

“Hello?” He repeated, with a tad more annoyance. 

And still there was silence. Except… when he listened closely, there was breathing. Hitched and stilted, as if the caller was having a hard time filling their lungs. 

“Who is this?” He meant to demand, though it came out a bit more genuinely curious than he’d intended. 

In response there was only a sigh, so quiet he might have imagined it, and then with a click the line went dead. 

******* 

And miles and miles away, Indrid Cold leaned his forehead against the grimy and frozen glass of the phone booth at the edge of a campsite. Far away, their shadows outlined by the light filtering through the open door of the only camper in view, Aubrey and Dani watched him curiously. After admitting that none of them could sleep, much as they’d all tried to fake it, the two girls had instead been trying to catch Indrid up on the films they considered “the true classics”. Tonight, in particular, they’d been enjoying Now You See Me - laughing uproariously every time he called a plot twist ten minutes early - only for him to freeze up with a vision right at the climax of the whole show, before running outside with a sense of urgency he hadn’t displayed since the day they’d left town. 

It hadn’t been anything truly urgent, really, though that hardly occurred to Indrid as he’d fumbled with the coins in his pocket through two layers of gloves. He’d seen Duck thrashing violently with a nightmare, and he’d known the timing of it wasn’t any more than a minute away. And without thinking he’d done the only thing he could do, which was to call him and hope his phone woke him up. 

In fact, it wasn’t until he’d heard the voice on the other line, and had his breath taken away in the very same way it had been the first time he’d ever called him - that time he’d warned of the impending damage to Leo’s store all those months ago - that he realized he shouldn’t be ringing Duck up at all. That it was in fact none of his business what Duck was up to, and that it was inappropriate of him to be bothering his former friend in the middle of the night when he actually, now that he thought about it, had nothing at all to say. 

“Hello?” 

But he wanted to say something. Anything. 

“Who is this?”

He wanted to say everything, in fact. 

So instead he hung up the phone, and his shoulders slumped with the effort of it. 

And he leaned his head against the phone booth, the change from his wasted minutes rattling uselessly from the coin dispenser and onto the ground. And he sighed. 

And that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks for the patience, and especially thank you to everyone who has commented! Reading the great responses is one of my favorite parts of updating. Additionally, the keen observer will have noticed I bumped the chapter count up a bit. Turns out there's just too much plot to cram into 5,000~ words apiece in a way that comes out at all satisfying. Hopefully this is a positive thing for you all rather than a negative one! 
> 
> Also, I'd like to plug another great piece of fan work I got in the interim! The very talented August drew a really beautiful piece of Duck and Indrid at Sundial Peak. I love it so much, you can see it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20061583


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really excited about this chapter, hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Indrid Cold had - for most of his time on this earth, and even for much of the time before that - been of the impression that his life was a story being shared by someone who was not particularly good at telling it. Whereas everyone he knew seemed to be on a linear path, or at least on a wandering one that still had the good sense to stick to one dimension, his was instead one that eternally wound itself up and down and through various unsatisfying trials that had uncountable and equally unlikely results. It was as if at birth someone had told him to draw a still life of a fruit bowl, only to later be told that the fruit bowl was not a fruit bowl at all, but was in fact a lion, and the picture he’d drawn was in color when it needed to be black and white, and the stakes were impossibly high, and more likely than not everything was on fire. And in such a situation as that, there was hardly anyone to blame but the narrator. 

Still, in a life full of unfulfilling half-resolutions and an infinite tapestry of loose-ends, he somehow hadn’t gotten much better at accepting his lot in it. And that was why he found himself cursing the world, and the narrator, and even himself a bit, as he leaned his forehead against the grimy and fogged-up window of the only payphone in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. 

“Indrid, you good?” Dani’s soft and recognizable voice cut through the darkness of the trees on all sides of them, as the glow from the open door of the Winnebago shone the only artificial light for miles into the otherwise empty camping ground at the border of the city. 

Was he good? Absolutely not. The love of his life - the real and genuine love he’d never expected the chance to see - was miles away on a physical level, and probably even further than that on an emotional one. And yet somehow, for some reason, the most pressing matter on his mind right now was the fact that right now Duck was all alone after a bad dream. 

Boy, he really was in it. 

“Just fine.” He called back, regardless. And he saw Aubrey’s distinctive silhouette lean against the door to the camper, her body language alone somehow conveying to him that neither of the girls believed him. 

“So what was that, then?” She called out to him, her voice hardly adjusting levels at all even when he returned to her general vicinity and back into the warmth of the indoors. “You ran out on our movie night cause you had to make an urgent call to Miss Cleo?” 

“Well give him the benefit of the doubt,” Dani chimed in, “maybe they had trade business to discuss.” 

“I’m a soothsayer, not a psychic.” Indrid responded flatly, as he brushed loose popcorn kernels off the couch he’d been sleeping on for what felt like far too long. “And that woman was neither.” 

“So how is Duck, then?” Aubrey asked, her tone smug. 

Indrid glared at her, though she might not have noticed what with the elbow she had to dodge from Dani. 

“He’s…. He had a nightmare, if you must know.” He admitted anyway after a moment’s pause, seeing no reason to hide when he’d already been caught. “I only called because I’d hoped the phone ringing would… Well, anyway.” And it was then that he took in Aubrey’s clear-attempt at a neutral expression, and a suspicion began to dawn on him. “How much do you know, anyway? About… Everything.” 

“How much do you know?” She replied, unhelpfully. 

“Well in any given situation you can assume I know quite a bit, given my abilities.” He said. And Aubrey rolled her eyes. 

“Hasn’t seemed that way to me.” She muttered. “Ok, here’s what I know. You and Duck are a couple of bona fide idiots, that real pure uncut stupidity. And you’re definitely in love with him, don’t even try to tell me you’re not. This whole trip you’ve been moping around on the couch like some kind of southern belle who’s just waiting around for Rhett Butler to show up.” 

“Wouldn’t I be Rhett Butler, since I’m the one who left?” Indrid interrupted indignantly. 

“No,” said Dani, between an amount of giggling he almost found offensive. “No, you’re definitely Scarlett O’Hara.” 

“I’m not Scarlett, she supports the Confederate Army!” 

“Fine.” Aubrey said, “We can make this more gay if you want. This is Brokeback Mountain and you’re both Ennis. And neither of you is willing to be Jake Gyllenhaal for a second and just talk about your feelings. God knows why, because it’s not like you have to drive 12 hours to see him like in the movie, and Jake Gyllenhaal is the hotter one anyway.” 

“Honey,” Dani interrupted. “I hate to cut you short on such a good analogy, but Heath Ledger was the hotter one.” 

“Was not.” 

“Was too. Jake had those weird sideburns by the halfway point, remember?” 

“You’re both wrong,” Indrid cut in, “David Harbour’s side character was the hottest.” 

“Well you would think that wouldn’t you?” Aubrey said. 

“We all know you have a type, Indrid. Chill out.” Dani added. 

Indrid glared at them both. “We’ve lost the plot a little bit, I think.”

“Right you are.” Aubrey said, only mildly ashamed. “So you’re totally in love with him, glad we’re all agreed on that. But it’s Brokeback, and you’re both Ennis, and as far as I can tell there isn’t even that homophobic rancher from the beginning that doesn’t want you to have any fun while you herd his sheep. It’s just you two both being stubborn idiots and not talking, and then throwing up in an alleyway cause you can’t stand the thought of losing him. Am I missing anything?” 

“I mean….” Indrid said. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.” 

“How?” Aubrey replied resolutely. 

And for the life of him, he couldn’t think of why. 

“It just...” He said, unsure of where the sentence was even heading. “It just is. Yes, I’ll admit it, I do love him. I’ve probably loved him since the second we met, and even before that really. I don’t know how to… I don’t know this emotion well, but the more I’ve felt it the more its seemed like it was always there. Like I’ve always loved Duck, and he’s always been in my heart, and he was always supposed to be. Like I’m…. I don’t know. I’m built to fit him, and I didn’t even realize it until I had him for a moment and then had to leave, but the shape of me doesn’t even make sense without him here to complete it. And fuck me if that doesn’t sound like everything I was scared of in the first place,” he continued, beginning to get worked up, “but I don’t think there’s anything I can do but belong to him. And I don’t even hate it, because it’s him. I just… I know I fucked up, and I don’t know if he could ever forgive me. But I want to go home.” 

The girls stared at him silently, and he could tell from the looks in their eyes alone that they knew. 

And after a moment of no response, Dani finally broke the quiet. 

“So do you want me to turn the camper around, or?” 

“Yes… Damn it, yes, I rather think we should.” 

****** 

Duck Newton had, quite frankly, fucking had it. 

He’d always considered himself a tough guy, and in fact he could reasonably make that claim more truthfully than just about anyone else he knew. But part of being a tough guy was living with the knowledge that everybody has some soft part of them they’d rather not get a boot to. Often enough that place was the groin, but it could get much more imaginative than that. And right now he felt as if these last few weeks had dealt him several swift steel-toed kicks to his overly-sensitive heart. 

The thing about it, though - which he was none too keen to admit - was that most of those kicks had been at least somewhat his fault. He hadn’t quite done the damage himself, but he sure as hell had pointed out all the places he could be hurt and told the world to take its best shot. And as much as he’d never dared to risk anything like that before, and couldn’t point to where the courage had come from even then, he had now reached a stage in recovery that he had never anticipated existing - wherein he could hardly bring himself to regret it. Bemoan the way things had turned out? Certainly. Curse the universe for turning his life into some sort of shitty practical joke, at his age? Absolutely. But several inadvertent moments of introspection at various ungodly hours of the morning had recently taught him to believe that if things were always leading this way… If he was always meant to be here, now, as alone as he’d ever been… He was at least glad he could do it without wondering whether any of it would’ve been different if he’d just been willing to risk his ass for a second. 

And it was with that very gung-ho fuck-it-all sort of attitude that he realized - while sitting at his desk on a weekday, 3 hours into an eternal 7 hour shift - that he didn’t actually know what it was they were all waiting around for. 

They knew what their monster was, didn’t they? And didn’t they even knew where to find it? Ever since they’d separated it from the most delicious source of secrets Kepler had to offer it had laid low for a spell, but it had to be hungry, right? Well, the way Duck saw it the world never offered up any cosmic cheat codes or celestial loopholes - and certainly not when it would be so life-savingly convenient. And perhaps it was just how squirelly all the sitting around had made him, or the slight tinge of entropic morbidity he’d colored his worldview with ever since it had become abundantly clear to him that even soulmates weren’t a guarantee. But it became suddenly more black and white than it had ever seemed to him before, the idea that there was nothing much more they could learn about this abomination that couldn’t be figured out while they were ridding the earth of it for good. 

So it was with all the adrenaline of that realization that he picked up the ancient landline on his desk, and rang the number he knew by heart. 

“Amnesty Lodge, this is Barclay speaking. How may I direct your call?” 

“Barclay, it’s Duck.” 

“Oh, hey man.” Barclay’s voice dropped its professional pretense and assumed the much more comfortable casual friendliness he’d made his trademark. “Did you hear about Aubrey and Dani maxing out Mama’s credit card at one of those soda shops? Boy, is she pissed.” 

“How do you even spend that much at a-” Duck began, before remembering the righteous energy that had brought him to call in the first place. “No, sorry, no time. I need to speak to Mama, it’s urgent.” 

From the other end of the line, Duck could hear the sound of Barclay hollering for Mama - the polite hand he had no doubt put over the receiver doing little to block the earth-shattering projection the man could give his voice when he wanted. After that there was a clatter, followed by some cursing, as his friend forgot - as he did almost every time Duck called - that the cord on the lodge’s main phone was not long enough to allow him to leave the kitchen with it. And the routine of it all, paired with Duck’s certainty that this interminable period of waiting would soon be coming to an end one way or another, gave him a sense of familiarity he almost didn’t realize he’d been missing. Much like the haphazard quilt that hung above the fireplace in Amnesty Lodge, the chaos that accompanied being truly involved in life - with all its loose ends and unfulfilling tangents - was something he found comforting by choice. 

“Hello? Duck? What’s wrong?” Mama’s craggy voice came through the speaker, after much ado. 

“Hey Mama.” He said, suddenly unsure just how he was going to pitch the idea that the plan they ought to go with was not having a plan at all. “I’ve been thinking, and I think… Well, no, let me start again. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who once said… no shit, that wouldn’t work, and I think it was Oscar Wilde anyway. Basically, what I’m trying to get at is-” 

“Duck?” Her reassuringly solid presence, even from afar, cut right through his bullshit. “Deep breath, sweetheart. Whatever it is, just say it.” 

He breathed in, and he breathed out. “Right, thanks. Ok, basically here’s what I’m thinking... We know plenty about this creature, and we’ve starved it out for weeks now. And it still feels like there’s a lot more we need to go on with this one, but I don’t know how much longer we can wait. And really, if you think about it, we’ve got one leg up on this guy. Because we know he’s going to be at a certain place in the woods, and that I can get him to Sundial Peak. And I’m not really a tactician, in fact I’m frankly awful at chess if that means anything. But an advantage is an advantage, and we should take adva… Uh, well.” He paused then, allowing his brain to catch up with his mouth before continuing. “Really what I’m trying to get across here is… I know at some point, no matter what we do, I’m going to be meeting this thing in the woods. And I don’t know if this part of my fate is something I can choose for myself, or if me choosing was the only thing fate was waiting for. But I’ve had it with that son of a bitch if I’m real honest. Fate can suck my ass, it hasn’t done me any favors in the last few months. I’m fighting this thing.“

Mama stayed silent for a moment too long on the other end of the line, and he briefly began to worry his brazenness had somehow offended her. But finally, she spoke. “I think you might be right there, Duck. I’m not sure I like it, but we haven’t gotten an inch further with our research on this thing, and it seems like the only way we’ve ever been able to figure out any weaknesses it’s got has been by actually getting up close and personal with it.” She sighed then, in that multi-world-weary way only she was capable of. “Damn it, alright. You get that magical sword of yours, and you just…. You think you can get it to Sundial Peak?” 

“I know I can.” He replied. “It’s about all I can remember from those visions, but I’m real positive on that one.” 

“Alright then, I trust you. You get out there and lure it to Sundial Peak. And be careful Duck, don’t take any risks just cause this one’s gotten a bit personal. None of us around here could stand to lose you, you keep that in mind. Just get it to Sundial Peak, and we’ll have as much backup as we can rustle up to help you out.” 

“You got it, Mama.” He said firmly, not allowing the momentum of his confidence to wane through sheer force of will even now that the future danger was confirmed. “I’ll see y’all there.” 

And with that he hung up the phone, with as much determination as the mundane action allowed him. He gathered all the necessary supplies from around him - Beacon already on his waist, where it had permanently resided ever since those terrible weeks of waiting had begun - and was halfway out the door before he wheeled around, with one last quick phone call to make. 

“Hey Juno, it’s Duck. Wouldn’t you know it, I’ve got half of my shift left and I’ve started to feel real sick…” 

 

******* 

 

The forest was everything he’d dreamed it to be. 

Or perhaps not dreamed, but nightmared. And not technically nightmared, either, but maybe envisioned. 

 

Regardless, through all the dense overgrowth Duck pushed himself through - his temptation to give in and start hacking away at the brush with Beacon like Indiana Jones with a machete nearly breaking his natural preservationist instincts - he could hardly say what it was that made that particular area of the old-growth forest the right one, save that he knew it when he saw it. 

The light filtered sparsely through the curtain of leaves overhead in a way that was just slightly more eery, here. The wind rustling through the branches seemed to pay particular attention to the hairs on the back of his neck. And every one of the Monongahela National Forest’s hundreds of indigenous species seemed to have decided that this was a place to be avoided at the moment. 

It had to be here. 

Unsure of what else to do, Duck did what he’d always done every time he’d had this vision before. 

He closed his eyes. 

And then he opened them. 

And unfortunately enough, that was all it took. 

Before he even bothered to swing his flashlight over to illuminate the eternal shade of the deep forest, he knew exactly what he’d find there. And he still did it anyhow, because he was only human. 

There, as they always had been, were three reflective eyes. 

He stood there for a moment - only a moment - and marveled at that oddly specific feeling that accompanied finding yourself physically present in a situation you’ve been dreading. After all those visions, which were coming back to him in bits and pieces now that the familiarity of his surroundings had jarred his memory, they had still done little to dull the effect of actually being here. His heart still raced, his flashlight still slipped slightly in his sweaty palm, and his stomach still dropped. 

And he still ran. 

Though he was a Chosen One, Duck had never particularly considered himself a hero. This ought to have been his first tip-off, that fate didn’t really know what it was doing. Because any cosmic being with a bit of competence would have known that he was not Harry Potter, but rather Neville Longbottom - or perhaps even a distant background character who could be seen sitting at a completely different table in the Great Hall, drinking pumpkin juice and minding his damn business. And that was fine with him, because by all rights it should have meant he’d never find himself running for his life in the overgrown brush of the deep parts of a forest, while a monster that had chased off some of his loved ones and killed some of the others was ripping apart the trees he loved behind him in hot pursuit. 

Life sure wasn’t fucking fair, huh? 

The scratch of the branches against his face, and the unsure footing of the tumbling and rocky ground below him was familiar, in a way that didn’t just recall all the times he’d been through this before. It was instead the sort of inconveniently-timed reminder one can only get when it’s least needed, that childhood is truly over and that at some point along the way you stopped daydreaming entirely. And out of nowhere he remembered all the days he’d run through the forest before - a wooden sword in hand and a gang of friends that had since scattered to the wind in tow - as he lived for a while in a world where every dragon was certainly to be defeated, and barring any unforeseen circumstances there was always your knight in shining armor out there somewhere in the world just waiting to rescue you. 

Boy howdy, life sure wasn’t fucking fair. 

He reached the base of the scramble to the tip of Sundial Peak then, blessedly enough, and it was there that he saw that Mama had made good on her promise of reinforcements. Her truck was parked at the rocky shore of the lake below, along with the Crepes by Monica van and a few other assorted modes of transport utilized by Kepler’s more mystical inhabitants. And it seemed like a good-sized number of people had to come to his aid, as crazy as this decision might have been. 

And yet, somehow and for some reason, he didn’t turn his heel and lure the abomination toward them. 

He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, other than that same feeling of annoyance with the obvious shortcomings of fate, that lead him to climb the rocky slope to the top of the peak. But one second he was there, stalling at the crossroads between a lake full of backup and a peak full of bad memories, and the next second he was halfway up, covered in scrapes and bruises from the terrible terrain and wondering what on earth had possessed him to make such a tactically unintelligent decision. 

Like he’d said, he’d never been good at chess. 

This time, however, cresting the peak brought back very few painful memories of that fateful night he’d taken his friendship with Indrid too far - if nothing else because he simply didn’t have the time. Between Beacon’s screeched curses at his foolishness in taking them away from the only help they had, and the overwhelming blanket of fear that seemed to trail alongside the abomination and cast a shadow over anything that got too close to it, he hardly had the time to spare a thought to his regret on the subject. Or maybe two, but no more than that. 

Instead, he turned around - Beacon in his still sweating hand - and swung with more ferocity than he’d ever managed to work up in his training sessions with Leo. 

The segmented blade bounced uselessly off the creature’s surprisingly sturdy forearm as it countered his attack, and he had little time to recover his footing and gather his thoughts before he found that he was swinging again, this time perhaps even harder than the first. 

It was an anger he’d never felt before in his life, which suddenly wrapped itself like a vicious snake around his heart and seemed to squeeze the air right out of his chest as a result. He’d always detested the feeling of losing control to anger, but there was no helping it now - and it seemed that this was one of the few instances in which the uncontrollable adrenaline of it might actually be useful. 

What was truly odd, though, was the sound of humanoid screaming that seemed to be coming from somewhere near his left ear. At first he’d assumed it was Beacon, the stupid sword unable to control its whiny tongue even in the midst of battle, but the words that were being said didn’t seem very in character at all. 

“Fuck you, you fucking fuck! You killed…. My damn…. Waitress… She was nice! Fuck you!” The voice said. 

And the creature seemed not to react at all, its drooping antlers shivering with the effort of blocking the blows - even as it never missed a beat in doing so. Duck noted with surprise that it hadn’t yet made an effort to turn the fight in its favor, never once yet going on the offensive. Though it was only a matter of time before his righteous energy depleted. 

And then he realized, with a much greater surprise, that the voice he heard was in fact him. 

Even as the blood pounded by his ears and the thumping of his terrified heart seemed to drown out the whole word in a cacophony of untimely rhythm, there in the background was the faint tenor of his own voice, and the words he was saying without consciousness. 

“You killed… my friend…. You killed that DICKHEAD Brisby…. You tried to kill Aubrey….. I won’t let you kill me…. I won’t let you kill Indrid, I’ll kill you first you sick sack of shit…. I love him, you hear me? You don’t get to touch him!” 

And as much as that last admission shocked Duck, in his apparent and embarrassing willingness to admit it out loud, it somehow shocked the creature far more. The second the words were spoken, the abomination stopped in its clockwork-like defensive movement and cocked its head at him. Not as if it heard the words he’d said and understood them, but rather almost as if it had smelled them. And in the passing moment when its guard was briefly down, Duck’s deeply-buried inner warrior took advantage - plunging Beacon forward, and cutting a sizable slice into the softer flesh of the beast’s stomach. 

The pain of it seemed to shock the abomination far more than his exclamations had, and Duck could hardly fault it for the ground-shakingly furious bellow it unleashed from its dripping and salivous mouth. In fact, he trembled with fear, as he felt the vibrations of the sound shake the fillings in his teeth like a particularly heady bass at the sort of clubs he had always refused to go to. 

And the creature, in turn, took advantage of his own distraction, swiping one of its razor-sharp talons through the air in front of him. Luckily, Duck had retained enough of a survival instinct - even in his terrified state of mind - to jump backwards rather unathletically, but the length of the claws did not spare him from their bite entirely. The tips of them scraped right through his standard-issue ranger’s uniform as if it had been nothing but a cobweb, and he felt the burn of the flesh on his upper arm splitting as they dug deep into the muscle there. 

Even worse, however, was the mistaken clip against Beacon the creature’s paw made as it retracted, sending his sword - his only means of protection - flying through the air and off the edge of the cliff 20 feet or so away, with nothing more than a “Damn you Duck Newton!” that faded almost comically as the weapon was lost to him. 

With that, the creature turned, almost triumphant, as if it knew it had won before the fight was even over. 

And it was then that Duck remembered how this vision had always ended. 

He felt the phantom grasp of a hand that had held his own - a hand that was hundreds of miles away at this point, and had never actually touched him at all. And he knew how this was supposed to go. 

Though what was far worse was that he knew that it wouldn’t. 

Fate had never been kind to him. Since the day he’d been told he was a Chosen One, it had only ever made promises - seemingly with no purpose other than to have them broken right as he relied on them the most. He’d been given a mentor and a single life’s purpose, only to have her wrenched away the moment he agreed to follow the path he’d been so forcefully pointed towards. 

He’d been given a soulmate, only to have him recoil in what had almost seemed like disgust the second Duck had finally decided to open his heart just wide enough to let the man in. 

And now he was being given an impossible plunge, from which he was told he would be saved. Only he knew his saviour was neither interested in the task nor close enough to take it on in the first place. 

But, he supposed - his heart already reconciled to the final loss he was setting himself up for - that he would rather die for the mistake of trusting his soulmate than at the hand of this nasty thing. It wasn’t going to get him too.

And so he turned toward the edge of the carrock where it hung over the lake in an almost perfect platform, and he ran as hard as he could - not allowing himself to slow for fear he’d stop entirely. 

And for the second time in that very same place, Duck Newton took a leap of faith. 

****** 

“Indrid, I don’t think we need to be driving quite this - SHIT!” Dani exclaimed, as she caught herself on the shotgun door handle of the Winnebago while he swerved to the left 20 feet in advance of the spot on the road a particularly stupid skunk was about to wander. “Quite this fast.” She finished, after catching her breath. 

“Don’t worry, I’m an excellent driver.” He said, as calmly as he was able. “Or perhaps not quite that, but I always know where the Highway Patrol cars will be, so I’ve never gotten a ticket.” 

“Do you even have a driver’s license?” Aubrey piped up from the back, where she’d been dramatically clutching at the vinyl table of his tiny kitchenette area ever since his fast and furious turn at the wheel had started. 

“Yes of course, I have several.” He replied blandly. “And yes-” he cut her off before she could even open her mouth again, “I do have to be driving this fast. I’ve got… well, not quite a fully fledged vision, but a very bad feeling.” 

“Me too, actually.” Dani said, her voice now quiet. “Not that I’m a fortune-teller or anything, but I get the sense our friends are going to need us.” 

“Well they sure haven’t called us, if that’s the case.” Aubrey threw in, her voice slightly muffled as she now clutched at the wall to inch her way forward to join them in the front. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Mama cancelled your phone plan, you lunatic.” Dani called back to her. “I told you we didn’t need to try every soda flavor in the shop!” 

“They were artisan!” Aubrey yelled back. “You know that word makes me go into a fugue state. This is really on you for not stopping me, if you think about it.” 

Dani did nothing but roll her eyes, and even so Indrid couldn’t help but be slightly jealous at the comfort of their domestic bickering. 

Suddenly, though - and perhaps even a millisecond before he consciously realized he should - Indrid swerved the camper van into an abrupt stop where the shoulder widened, and barely managed to throw the thing into park with its engine still idling before he ran out into the road and collapsed with a vision. 

And boy, was this one ever a doozy. 

He saw Duck, running away from the creature that had been causing them all so much trouble. And as he neared the lake, where their friends waited to assist him in battle, he instead ran toward Sundial Peak, and began to climb. 

Indrid almost screamed at him to turn around, right there in the empty road, much as he knew it would do neither of them any good. 

But Duck continued, occasionally falling and scraping various parts of his arms and legs in a way that made Indrid’s heart hurt, even as he knew a far greater danger was only seconds behind. 

His friend… his soulmate fought valiantly when he reached the top. And he seemed to be possessed with an anger Indrid had never seen on him before - and doubted he’d ever see again, one way or another. His brow was knit together with a fury that made Indrid want to reach forward and free him from, somehow, and he seemed to be screaming something that was indiscernible in all the fragility of the vision he was being provided. 

And then he saw Duck gain an advantage over the creature, dealing it a significant blow, and somehow Indrid knew - even before the fates told him - that the unfortunate favor was about to be returned. 

When Duck was hurt, Indrid did scream in earnest - if only for a moment. He clasped a hand over his mouth, even as his muted senses told him that Aubrey and Dani had rushed to his side and were attempting to understand what on earth was wrong. He waved them off, unwilling to lose a second of relevant information even at such a heavy emotional cost.

And that was when Duck did the strangest thing of all. His sword lost, and tears he was no doubt entirely unaware of in his eyes, he looked around him, and seemed to make a firm decision even when no obvious solution presented itself from Indrid’s point of view. 

And then, with seemingly no reason at all, he ran as hard as he ever had before, and leapt right off the edge of the cliff. 

That very same cliff they’d once sat at the edge of, together. 

Indrid wrenched himself from the future, then, determined to fix it in the present with more resolve than he’d ever allowed himself - even in his most naive and hopeful years. 

“Indrid! Indrid, buddy, what the hell is happening. Talk to us!” Aubrey was yelling, while Dani had apparently grabbed him by the shoulders and begun to shake him softly. 

“It’s…. Duck needs my help.” He said, somehow out of breath, though he’d no doubt been almost perfectly still throughout the entire event. 

“Well then get in the car, let’s drive!” Aubrey said. “No more complaints from me, we can-” 

“No.” He cut her off. “No, there’s no time. I have to… Here, take the van and meet us at Sundial Peak. I have to get there far quicker, or something truly terrible is going to happen. I’ll see you there.” He said, with a definitive finality. 

And with no more explanation than that, not wanting to scare the girls into the type of reckless driving he felt only he was capable of doing correctly, he reached up to his face and removed his glasses. 

The world that greeted him when he cast his mothy vision around to it was as it always was in this state. Everything was the same, it was just… more so. The colors had slightly more depth, the fragmented view his compound eyes provided him allowed more vision than he was perhaps always comfortable with having. But he hardly had time to adjust to the feeling, as he took flight the second his wings began to unfurl, and flew wildly fast - with almost no thought at all toward being discreet, even in the middle of the day as he was now - toward Sundial Peak. 

The journey passed him by in a blur, the same way the trees below him had begun to blend together into deeper hues of green and brown as the forest thickened and he left civilization entirely in his dust. He passed unfamiliar ridges of rock and ice as he wove his way through the mountain range, which shot up graspingly toward the sky like the fingers of ancient giants, and the snow that always coated their tops blew through the same wind he battled as he passed them by in a way that had a strange softness to it. The particles of ice and frost chilled his skin as he shot through them, and the effect was one that might have convinced him - if he didn’t know any better - that that was how clouds were made. 

But before he knew it the wall of alpine rock that had separated him from the town of Kepler, from his home, was far behind him, and the familiar dome of Sundial Peak arced into view - extremely close and still impossibly far. 

His insectile eyesight at least provided him the advantage of being able to watch the same story play out - this time in person - as he beat his wings helplessly in an attempt to go faster than was even physically possible. 

There was Duck in the distance, swinging that talking sword of his with some sort of internal hellfire he could hardly understand. 

He was still so far away. 

There was that moment, where Duck gained an advantage, and dealt some true damage to his opponent. 

Closer now, but still too far. 

There was that dreadful moment after, when the abomination swung its sinuous and blackened arm toward Duck, and his soulmate was unable to escape unscathed. 

Closer now. Getting closer. 

There was the sword, lost, and Duck’s desperate search for a way out. 

Please, I’m so close. Please hold on. 

And there he was, near enough now that Indrid almost felt he could reach out and grab him - in the same way that traffic always felt like it was made of toy cars when viewed from above - as he ran desperately toward the edge of the cliff and leapt. 

And as Indrid fought to attain an impossible speed, slowly gaining on Duck as he began his descent, he noticed the man do something he hadn’t seen in the vision - as quickly as he’d cut it off when this danger had made itself known. 

The man twisted himself, mid leap, into an odd position. Where it would have been natural - although still entirely crazy - to make the jump with his feet downward, the way any jump should go, Duck had instead turned himself so that his back (his disturbingly fragile and human back, Indrid thought) was to the ground, and his hand was thrown up toward the sky. Reaching upward, for what he didn’t quite know - though the man’s eyes were closed tight anyway so it was possible he was equally uncertain. 

It certainly helped Indrid, though. And as Duck began to gain momentum on his ill-fated fall downward Indrid was almost able to reach him. 

Just barely. 

Their fingertips brushed, even, but it wasn’t quite enough. 

And Indrid knew exactly where he’d seen all of this before. 

In all the hubbub of the last few weeks he’d forgotten entirely, but he’d seen all of this before. 

His mothlike hand, reaching desperately for Duck’s oh-so familiar one. That teasing brush that wasn’t quite enough to save him. That familiar pain in his gut that he experienced over and over again, each time like the first, as he was forced to face the fact that he can’t ever truly change the future. 

And that heady knowledge, in the midst of it all, that he would never stop trying. 

Indrid tucked his wings behind himself, making his form as aerodynamic as possible, and rather than flying he allowed himself to fall too. He felt the rush of gravity as it worked for and against him, and his stomach made itself comfortable somewhere near his throat as Duck drew ever so slightly closer and closer to him, and unfortunately so did the ground. 

Almost there, almost there. 

******** 

Duck screwed his eyes tight. 

As much as he loved the idea that the last thing he saw could be the forest he’d worked his whole life to preserve, he had to admit - in these moments that might be his last - that he really was only human. And what human wants to watch while they fall to an almost certain death. 

He knew he’d turned around at the last second, so his back was going to take the brunt of the fall. He couldn’t help but retain that last smidgen of faith in the idea that there was something out there that was working to keep the world just. Something that might make the soulmate who hadn’t taken much of an interest in him suddenly decide to take a quick trip a few hours to the south to sweep him off his feet just like that knight in shining armor had always promised to. 

Even so, he kept waiting to feel the impact on his back. Shit, this was going to hurt wasn’t it. 

This was why divers always go in hands first. You never saw anyone in the Olympics diving in backwards. 

Divers were pretty cool. That Tom Daley sure was handsome. Even Ned’s phoon that one time had been kind of badass, much as he hated to admit it. 

He shouldn’t be thinking like this in his last moments, should he? Boy this was taking a while. Or maybe he was just experiencing that rapid-fire thinking that happens to people in moments of crisis. Shouldn’t he be thinking of something better though? Maybe Jane, or- 

No, definitely not Jane, going the rest of her life without a big brother to have her back. He had a few seconds left, and he wasn’t going to go out sad. 

Tom Daley really was very attractive, think about that. Think about how many handsome people you got to meet, Duck. Not a bad life. Even if the only handsome guy you ever really gave a shit about wasn’t - 

Nope, no sad stuff. 

No Indrid. 

No - 

And then, out of nowhere, his shoulder started to hurt. 

Hurt like hell, in fact. But not in the kind of way he’d expect it to as it made contact with the rocky ground below him - where the rest of him should have hurt as well, and he should be more than a little dead. Instead it was like it had just been pulled, extremely hard, by the hand that was in his. 

The hand that was in his? 

Yeah, that was a hand for sure. He knew that hand. He didn’t know how, but he knew he knew it. 

And as the wind that had been rushing in a cacophonous and atonal symphony past his ears stopped its chorus abruptly, and the thundering beating of his heart quieted a little slower than that, he heard a familiar voice - this time not his own - in his ears. 

“-got you Duck. I’ve got you now, Duck. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it happens, while I apparently have begun to write fanfiction by night, my day job is to write music. My writing a piece for this pic was inevitable, probably, and Duck's whole journey this chapter was obviously the perfect thing to stick a theme to. You can find the piece here: (https://soundcloud.com/user-864278289/duck-newton-finds-his-courage) if you like. It ends with a little love theme for the two of them if that sweetens the pot for anyone. 
> 
> And of course, as always, thank you to everyone who has left such amazing comments! A special shoutout to my friend Bob, who has been following this story almost since the beginning, and to whom this chapter is dedicated.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well.... Here it is. As was always the plan, the finale is being ignored here pretty much entirely. Alternate Universe, and whatnot. This chapter took me a while to get out, and I appreciate everyone's patience in waiting for it! I didn't want to rush this and wrap the whole thing up in a way I wasn't really proud of. So thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoy it.

It was dark in Kepler, West Virginia, and one of the only pairs of stoplights in town blinked a glowing red warning into the din that tonight was not a night to be trifled with. A storm - which had whipped up seemingly out of nowhere and draped itself over the sparsely-populated town - had knocked out the power to the small traffic grid of the main drag. And its 3 intersections total would have likely been thrown into disarray, were there currently anyone crazy enough to venture out into the fray. Now, they reverted to their emergency protocol - flashing crimson in an asynchronous rhythm which cast a dappled and angry-red glow down the street, across the drenched pavement, and into the windows of the vacant shops below.

And for a moment - though the rain fell upwards and downwards and sideways in a confused and chaotic pattern, and the wind howled with a fierceness that seemed almost pained - everything else was completely still. 

And then a secondary source of light parted the darkness. 

The high beams of Mama’s ancient and trustworthy truck flooded the seemingly abandoned town, as its residents latched their shutters and settled in to watch reruns of Saturday Night Dead while they weathered out the odd storm. The nearly bald tires of her 12-Valve cut through the standing water beneath them like rudders, shooting waves that drenched the empty sidewalks on either side of the road with an urgency that almost matched the circumstances.   
And inside the cab, her large coat wrapped around her to fight a chill that even the sputtering heater couldn’t touch, Mama was silent and intent. The crimson flash of the stoplight as she tore through it without pause highlighted her face in an angry glow, casting her high cheekbones with even further dramatacism, as if she were an avenging angel and hell had just opened early. Despite this, anyone that didn’t know her might not have known anything was wrong at all. Her expression was pulled tight into a smooth mask of calm, and her posture was almost forcibly relaxed. But the two figures - hunched next to her on a bench seat so ancient almost all the suede had worn smooth - recognized the impatient tapping of her thumb on the wheel as being a small symptom of a much greater fear. 

Ned and Barclay exchanged a look. This really wasn’t good. 

“So, uh, Mama. Any explanation for dragging me out of my cozy bed at ass o’clock at night?” Asked Ned tentatively. “Not that I’m not willing to help, of course,” he quickly followed up, “just that I might not be much use if I don’t know what we’re doing, you know.” 

Mama didn’t respond, her eyes fixed on the treacherous road ahead of her. 

“I know it’s something to do with Duck.” Barclay offered in a helpful whisper. “He called earlier, and-” 

“Duck has decided to fight the abomination.” Mama said curtly, apparently having decided her disinterest in holding a debatably inane conversation was slightly lesser than her disinterest in listening to one. 

“Duck has… He what?” Ned demanded in shock. “Our Duck? You mean the Duck that I know? The Duck that I know, Duck from the Forest Service…. That Duck wanted to put himself in the middle of a fight? Duck Newton?” 

“How many fucking Ducks do you know, Ned?” Asked Mama, though she very clearly didn’t want an answer. “Our Duck. He got tired of waiting around. Can’t say that I blame him, especially given... Well…” 

“He probably didn’t like being kept from his soulmate, did he? Love makes you do crazy shit.” Ned said, this time with a touch more reverence. And Mama almost slammed on the brakes in surprise before remembering just what kind of terrible rush they were in, as she and Barclay both gave him a look of shock. “What, a guy can’t state the obvious around here anymore?” 

“Duck has a soulmate?” Barclay demanded. “How? I didn’t think you Earth people even did that.” 

“How did you figure that out, Ned?” Mama said over him. “He’s been keeping it quiet, they both have.” 

“Well they’re not very good at it.” Ned grumbled. “I might just be some old con man, but I know the real thing when I see it. Duck told me about his soul mark a few months ago, and he met Indrid a little while after that. It seemed pretty clear to me, I thought we were all just being polite about it.” 

Barclay smacked him over the head lightly. “I can’t believe this Ned. You had some hot goss like that and you didn’t even deign to tell me!” 

“I thought you knew!” 

“Boys…” Mama cut in, her voice tired. “Other people’s secrets aside, we’re still deep in a crisis here. Duck might have the power of love to back him up, but he’s going to be in some real shit if we aren’t there too. He told me he could get himself and the creature safely to Sundial Peak - something about a vision he’d had. And I told him we’d have his back from there. Unfortunately, two of our best fighters are busy keeping the other lovestruck fool as far from danger as possible, but we’ve still got a couple people from the lodge willing to lend a hand, and you said Kirby could meet us there with Billy, right Ned? So we’ll be fine. We can…. We can protect him.” 

Ned looked out the drenched windshield - the rain slowly letting up as they drove deeper into the forest, as if the rains conjured by the monster that now threatened their friend were nothing but a subconscious storm that formed an unconscious and angry halo around the creature they were now rushing toward with abandon. And neither for the first time nor the last, he experienced the familiar feeling of fear. The same fear he’d always tried to hide behind three layers of charisma and a healthy portion of light fibbery. A fear that had followed at his heels like a dog his whole life, and had confirmed itself to be warranted far too many times for his liking. Only this time, rare as this was, the fear was not for himself. It was for his friend. 

 

******* 

It was an odd thing, really.

Indrid had just experienced what had felt like a series of excruciating heart attacks in under an hour - beginning with the moment he had pulled the Winnebago over to the side of the road and realized with terrible certainty that Duck was in mortal danger, and continuing until the moment he had finally been certain that his soulmate was safely deposited on the ground that had so recently been rushing to greet him. And still, a small part of his brain couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that finally - after all those times he’d had to stop himself from doing so - he’d just held Duck’s hand.

And sure, the circumstances were nothing short of terrible. But even so…

He’d had a firm grip - and a good thing too, because that’s what had saved him in the end. But his palms were soft...

Back in the present, Duck was now breathing heavily, laying on the forest floor that had so recently threatened his life as he worked through the miniature panic attack that tended to accompany being suddenly wrenched from a certain death. His arm was thrown over his eyes, which Indrid could tell from the wrinkles on his face were scrunched tight, and he didn’t speak for a long while.

Until.

“Where the fuck did you come from, my man?” Duck demanded breathlessly, out of the blue, his free hand clutching desperate handfuls of the dirt like it was about to be pulled out from underneath him. “Not that I don’t appreciate it… But seriously, what the fuck?”

“I -” Indrid attempted, before realizing his vocal cords felt all wrong, and taking his glasses - somehow still whole despite the battering they’d taken during their less than delicate landing - from the back pocket of his jeans, and cramming them back onto his face. “Sorry, I uh… Vision. You know.” 

“Big fan of those visions of yours, my man.” Duck said, reaching out blindly to grope the air for a bit before locating Indrid’s denim-covered shin and patting it fondly. “Keep it up.” 

And for some reason - one which Indrid could not for the life of him explain - after the lifetime of angst-ridden moping he’d done, and all the many times he’d cut himself just short of letting all the feelings he’d refused to recognize fall into place, and all the times Aubrey had subsequently kicked his ass for it... That small moment was the last piece that needed to fall into place. 

It was a uniquely overwhelming feeling, of the sort he couldn’t even have imagined before experiencing it. As if he somehow became aware that during all his travels from one planet to the other he had left pieces of his heart behind. Little moments of love that had lingered at rest stops and by cliffsides as he’d taken in a wonderful view or experienced a moment of kindness from a stranger. And suddenly the endless expanse of the worlds was laid out in front of him, with all of its unknowable enormity - in a way that resembled the sensation of looking up and really, for once, seeing the canvas of stars that were always so unassumingly splashed across the unrelenting eternity of the night sky. Only now it was all pulled into one unsustainably tiny point. Every moment he had ever loved and every time he had ever let his heart out to breathe for even the briefest of seconds was suddenly wrenched across great distances and concentrated into this one second right now, and into this man right in front of him. And it was so strong and terrifying a feeling he for a moment almost feared for Duck’s life - in a way altogether separate from the fear that was already there. Even though Duck had survived that terrible fall, and even if he survived this new abomination, could he really survive the burden of all of Indrid’s love? 

And just then Duck pulled his arm away from his face, and he glanced up and smiled at him, and he made it look easy. 

So Indrid just stood there, his mouth open like an idiot, and said nothing at all. 

And before long, he didn’t have the chance. Duck had only just seemed to register that he wasn’t likely to get a coherent response before Barclay and Ned came bounding through the trees and into the small thicket where Indrid had managed to - rather gracelessly - land them. 

“Holy shit, Duck, what the hell was that?” Ned hollered. “Have you lost your damn mind? What’s gotten into you?” 

“Fucking good thing Indrid here just can’t leave you alone.” Barclay added, seeming calmer but no less angry at his friend’s recklessness. “We thought you were toast. Mama’s furious, by the way, so that’s going to be your problem to deal with later….” He huffed out a short breath of frustration, before visibly gathering his thoughts. “But right now we have to hurry, there’s a whole bunch of us by the lake. Mama figures the abomination isn’t going to be able to retreat, especially now that Indrid’s here to tempt it. We need to regroup there as fast as we can.” 

Indrid, for his part, still felt incapable of formulating any significant kind of sentence. But Duck seemed to know that, and after giving him a small glance for affirmation he nodded for the both of them, unconsciously grabbing Indrid by the shirtsleeve and giving him a tug toward surer safety. 

And Indrid just let himself be led. 

They passed quickly through the copse of oak and aspen, and as the foliage thinned the lake came once more into view. The disturbingly still waters reflected the slowly fading light of the sky almost perfectly, only interrupted where logs thick with moss drifted aimlessly near the shore. And on the other side - blessedly - was Mama’s truck, alongside the Crepes By Monica van, and the silhouettes of a handful of friends. 

Barclay marched them toward the opposite shore, his annoyance clear in his gait, and before long the expression on Mama’s face was made unfortunately clear. 

Boy oh boy, was she mad. 

“Son, you’ve got some real explaining to do after that little stunt.” She called out, her normally even voice booming across the water. 

Duck flinched. 

“Don’t think you’re in the clear either, Indrid.” She added, and he flinched too. “I’ll admit I appreciate you saving Duck’s sorry ass, but what the hell are you doing here? We sent you away to protect you. Now where’s Aubrey and Dani? And where’s my credit card?” 

Luckily, it was at this point that the power of speech decided to revisit him, and he tentatively managed what he was certain was a disappointing response. “I.. I don’t really…. I saw that Duck was going to jump, and I just sort of... Flew here.” 

Mama fixed him with a stern look, of the sort that might have melted a weaker man whose brain wasn’t otherwise shielded by the distraction of frankly ridiculous amounts of love, before she responded curtly. “Well I’m glad you did. I should probably be angry with you, given how reckless flying around in broad daylight is, but we don’t really have the time right now... We’ve got a monster to slay. I sure hope those girls are on their way to back us up, at least.” 

“Oh they are.” Indrid chimed in, glad to finally have helpful information as was supposed to be his purview. “They’ll be a ways behind me, given they’re probably sticking to the traditional roads. Although, actually, it appears there’s at least a twenty percent chance they attempt to take an unmarked back trail… it appears to be intended for horses, but they’re likely to make it through relatively unscathed. My Winnebago, on the other hand...” 

Mama sighed, her expression one of a woman almost too tired to actually be actively exhausted by that particular duo anymore. “Well, don’t worry too much about your trailer just yet Indrid. There’s no guarantees we make it out of this alive, but if we do I’m sure we can work something out for you. In the meantime, there’s no sense including them in our battle plans just yet. If and when they arrive they’re more than capable of finding some weak points to fill. For now, we’re working with what we’ve got.” 

And the others began to gather around, recognizing her casual approach to a call to arms, as they listened intently to their battle plan. 

 

********* 

Duck Newton had always been of the opinion that people were never just people. People were places and things. And as much as it might have felt that the gas station attendant in Lewisburg had been dropped into existence three months ago right as he’d passed through town, and had been wiped from the map the moment Duck had purchased his Takis and a 17 oz Diet Coke and turned his back once again, it was somehow an even odder thought to realize that right now that same man was probably behind that same counter. Eating day old expired chips he got for free and smelling the wall of cigarettes behind him where the fumes filtered through their wrapped plastic, entirely unaware that the guy he’d refused to take a fifty from was now preparing to battle it out against a creature that - if it were the victor - could very easily threaten his life... He had seemed like a man with more than a few secrets. 

Even that, though, only affirmed that people were people. To realize that people were places and things was to realize that that gas station attendant in particular had a mother, and a wife or a husband. And he lived in a home, or in an apartment, or in a trailer. And someone had probably given him the dirty cableknit sweater that he’d clearly worn so often he’d put holes in the elbows where he rested them against the counter. And he might have been thinking of that someone when Duck had walked in. He might not have taken Duck’s fifty because some other dipshit whom Duck might never even meet had given him a counterfeit months before he’d strolled into the Go Mart and made a beeline for the refrigerated drinks. 

And really there was no one on earth who was just their own person, completely independent of everyone else. Everyone was always thinking of someone, or somewhere, or trying not to, and no one was ever reacting to any one situation by itself. 

And right now - with the wind against his back as it brought with it a chill from the surface of the lake, and while he prepared to fight the monster that had caused so much harm to people he’d cared about, alongside people he cared about even more - Duck was not just Duck. 

He was Jane’s older brother. He was the guy who had stormed up to a sixth-grader on the playground and gotten his little third-grade ass beat because the kid had stolen his sister’s pencil case on what was supposed to be her exciting first day of kindergarten. 

He was the private lake where he’d almost lost his shot at becoming a Forest Ranger in college because he and Juno had been out swimming at 2 in the morning, and when he’d gotten caught and she’d managed to escape he’d refused to name names. 

He was the greasy laminated menus at the Nostalgia Diner. He was the guy who’d always relied on Sharon getting his order just right, no matter how bad his week had been before that. He was the way she’d always managed to cheer him up just by keeping his coffee cup full. And he was the one who hadn’t been there to save her, when she’d needed it. So now he was going to be the one who didn’t let that happen to anyone else. 

He was the fact that his boots were full of water, and it was ticking him off just a bit. He was the rip in his shirtsleeve, and the fact that he’d now have to steal a new one from the miscellaneous bin at work and try to play it off to Juno, who was definitely going to know somehow anyway and give him a good teasing. He was the guy with all these friends to back him up, and with his soulmate of some sort or another at his right hand side. 

He might die today, but he’d been all that already. And wasn’t that something.

The creature had skulked off back into the shadows of the trees surrounding them, but through some shared sense of foreboding premonition they all agreed it likely hadn’t gone far. There was too much to tempt it right where they were. 

The group had gathered with their backs to the lake, the only place they felt somewhat certain they couldn’t be ambushed by a sudden appearance through a hapless tree. And they had arranged themselves in clusters only a few dozen feet apart, vaguely hoping that a strength in numbers and coverage from nearby rock formations would give them an edge. 

Duck, Indrid, and Mama were in the middle. The reasoning had not been discussed, but that didn’t mean that nobody knew. 

They were the ones with the most secrets. They were bait. 

And so they waited. 

And waited. 

And waited. 

Initially, in total silence. But even a strong sense of pre-mortem dread couldn’t quiet that group forever. At first it was just nervous giggling from Ned at noticing Billy’s interested examination of a piece of trash that had floated to their side of the lake. Before he’d gotten the chance the really laugh at the thought of Ryan Gosling eating a wet Baby Ruth wrapper, however, Barclay had taken one of his mittens off and rather forcefully jammed it in his mouth. But by then the silence was already broken. 

After that came a few whispered reassurances between the handful of Amnesty residents who were lying in wait on the side opposite. And before long it was a full blown muted argument between Ned and Kirby about whether Billy ought to be made to wait in the van. 

“Would you all please shut it,” Mama hissed, “you’re letting your guards down.” 

“Doesn’t seem to be much we’re guarding against at the moment.” Duck muttered, his excess adrenaline slowly turning into annoyance. 

“And I’ll bet that’s just what it wants you to think.” Mama whispered back sternly. 

“Perhaps…” Indrid began delicately, clearly choosing his words carefully. “Well, if we are meant to be reeling this thing in, perhaps we ought to make ourselves into juicier bait. The abomination has a propensity for striking when its victims are alone, so it might take more than our mere presence to tempt it to attack us in large numbers.” 

Mama sighed. “You’ve got a point there. But how do you suggest we do that?” 

“Not to butt in,” Ned interrupted, his attempt at a whisper just a touch too loud, “but maybe if we all think about our biggest juiciest secrets…. You know, really let ourselves marinate in them. It might smell that a little better.” 

“Not a bad idea.” Indrid said, although he looked a tad uncomfortable with the thought. 

“Alright then, if it’ll get you all to hush up.” Mama grumbled. “Everybody think about a secret real hard, but for Christ’s sake just don’t let your guard down…” 

And once more a solemn silence fell over their congregation. 

Kirby thought about the unsanctioned tip jar he’d been setting out while Ned was away. 

Barclay thought about switching out Ned’s salt and sugar, and how Ned hadn’t even noticed. 

Billy thought about the Baby Ruth wrapper. 

Ned thought about the time he’d switched out the sugar and salt at breakfast, and how Barclay hadn’t reacted. He very determinedly did not think about Aubrey. 

Mama thought about her art. 

Duck thought about Indrid. 

Indrid thought about Duck. 

And off in the distance, miles away and barely in sight over the tips of the trees that blew frantically in a growing wind, a storm began to brew once again. 

Duck gripped the handle of his sword - retrieved unscathed, though extremely bitter about its owner’s lack of tactical technique, from the base of the mountain - and for once, even with how roughly it was being handled and how little it liked that, Beacon was silent. 

And then, in front of them, an oak tree began to sway. 

This in itself was slightly notable to Duck if no one else. The pines, with their softer wood, had begun to sweep this way and that in choreographed unison as the wind whipped up around them, but the solitary oak was made of firmer stuff. 

What was noticeable to everyone else, however - and slightly more pressing - was the fact that it was bending in the wrong direction. As the rest of the forest blew one way it tilted the other, straining against the wind, its leaves quivering and rustling with some unknown force. 

And then a crack began to part its trunk, splitting the tree along its bark lines as a long and talonous hand seemed to reach out from the dead wood at its very heart. 

And so, the beast emerged. 

For some of their group this was their first encounter with this new abomination that had been threatening their home, and Duck had the passing thought that it certainly didn’t disappoint. It was perhaps more visible now than it ever had been, its edges not quite firm but certainly less vague, in a way not dissimilar to the way that shadows appeared more sharp and definite at midday than in the evening. Its sinuous body was still for a moment, save for the ragged breaths that caused its drooping antlers to shiver at its heaving humanoid shoulders, unaffected by the wind entirely. 

And then it lurched. Not at Duck, or at Indrid, but to the right. 

At Ned. 

The gang was shocked, Ned not the least among them, and in his surprise he stumbled back among the rocky shores of the lake and collapsed ass-first under the turn of a particularly loose stone. It was only Barclay’s quick thinking that saved him, as he ripped the bracelet from his arm and transformed into the familiar yet always startlingly unexpected shape of his natural form, grappled with the creature for a moment before forcefully shoving it back in the direction it came from. 

And for a moment, as the abomination regained its footing, and as the group of them stared at it in an odd second of mutual surprise, it observed them back. 

And then Duck - only realizing what he was doing when he was halfway through doing it - charged into the fray. 

“Dammit Duck.” He heard Mama mutter, as she unsheathed her large bowie knife from where it sat on her hip and ran in behind him. 

“Yes, Duck Newton.” Beacon said in its unshakeable sneer. “Face your fate for once, why don’t you?” 

Duck, diplomatically, chose not to respond, and in doing so was able to hear Ned and Barclay bickering behind him as Barclay no doubt helped Ned to his feet so they could also follow suit. 

“Don’t know why it decided to pick on me.” Ned’s grumble carried mutedly over to Duck’s ears, “I was just thinking about a harmless goof I pulled on you. Not soulmate level stuff like that pair of bozos.” 

“No way!” Barclay responded, his voice in his true form an octave lower than usual, and slightly more gravelly - though the excitement in it shone through regardless. “I was thinking about the same thing too. It was this time I -” 

At this point Duck stopped listening, as the creature - now no more than ten feet away thanks to his mad sprint - began to recoil slightly, as if it had smelled something awful. 

“Strange…” He thought, but he had no more time to reflect on it before the battle was at hand. 

It was then that time began to pass in pieces, as if his consciousness were a lone boat on the water, only graced with the occasional illumination from the lighthouse on shore as it swept its beam uncaringly past. 

He swung his sword fiercely, only to feel it bounce back uselessly against the unknown chitin of the creature’s forearm. 

And then he was thirty feet away from the spot he’d just been, watching Mama skillfully deflect the arcing swing of the creature’s razor-sharp claws with nothing but her knife, sparing Kirby from an almost certain mauling as he realized far too late that his pocket-sized snake slayer pistol was doing no damage at all. 

And then he was crouching behind a rock, waiting for the abomination to pass him as it made an attempt to go for Barclay once more, knowing full well his weapon would bounce off as uselessly as always but unwilling to go down any way but swinging. 

And then, blessedly, Aubrey and Dani were right beside him. 

He wasn’t quite sure just when they’d shown up, but it had to have been recently - because Mama was still demanding answers from them mid-fight, as they brushed an unusual amount of dirt and dead leaves off of each other and armed themselves for the battle ahead. 

They must have taken the road less traveled, then. 

“What took you girls so long?” Mama demanded, her voice even and authoritative as ever even when exerting herself. 

“Well, unlike some people around here we can’t just fly anywhere we’d like.” Dani responded cheerfully, her mood apparently considerably brighter than Duck’s at the moment. 

“And where’s my credit card?” Mama continued, undeterred. 

“Mama, I cannot tell a lie.” Aubrey said. “Dani left it in the bathroom at the 7/11.” 

“Yeah, good one George Washington.” Dani muttered. 

“Alright, alright…” Aubrey admitted. “I left it in the bathroom at the 7/11. You happy now?” 

And oddly enough, at that exact moment, Duck took a swing. 

Well, actually, that wasn’t odd at all. He’d taken so many that day his arms had begun to feel like they’d likely wither and fall off the second he stopped. What was odd was the fact that this time he met no resistance. Beacon carved through the shoulderblade of the abomination like it was nothing more than a particularly tender piece of meat, and the creature roared in pain and fury. 

And Duck, for his part, was so shocked by this turn of events he once more forgot to defend himself. 

He never actually saw the blow that struck him, though he certainly felt it. The beast, in a blind rage, swung its arm with brutal force and struck him across the chest with such strength that he went flying, his head snapping to the side and crashing into the bone of his shoulder with a painful thud. 

And then a second and decidedly more painful impact spread across what felt like his whole body, as he connected with a large rock at the base of the mountain, and the world went black. 

 

***** 

Indrid saw what was about to happen only a split second before it did, although what made it markedly worse was the fact that he saw the wrong thing entirely. One moment he was attempting to escort Billy to safety after the handsome goat had so bravely leapt onto the creature’s back to distract it from taking a chunk out of Barclay (and been tossed rather roughly on the ground for his trouble). And the next thing he knew, he found himself in the familiarly foggy world of the near future. 

It was rare that his visions took him by complete surprise the way this one did, though the urgency and his distraction made it more than forgivable. What was altogether more important was that he saw - through the vague cloudy veil of almost-certainty that visions tended to take on, as if guarding themselves from the damnation of absolute fact - that Aubrey and Dani were soon to arrive. And that when they did, they would have an apparently mundane conversation with Mama about the particulars of her missing card. And even as all that happened, and as he heard the terrifying roar of the abomination as it screamed out in pain, he found that the tenuous grasp on his own focus that his visions allowed him was not being directed at the beast itself, nor was it directed at his soulmate - the one whom he’d argue, with extreme bias, was the most important factor in all of this anyway. Instead it remained fixed on Aubrey and Dani, to an extent that he only gathered that harm would befall Duck at all thanks to their horrified reactions as they called his name, and the sickening and unmissable thud of a large body colliding with a hard surface. 

And then he was back in the present. 

And Aubrey was wrapping up her admission of the truth. 

And he wrenched his body around as quickly as possible, only to see - as always - a future he’d do anything to prevent forcing itself unflinchingly into the present. 

He didn’t scream, if only because there wasn’t time. There was never enough time. And he saw himself being cornered by the beast thanks to his foolish decision to rush over to Duck’s limp and unmoving body. But he did it anyway. 

He ran past Aubrey and Dani and Mama - and even right past the abomination itself - with a speed he hadn’t matched since that summer he’d briefly decided to take up running, and which he doubted he’d ever achieve again for one reason or another. And he even heard the creature follow him in malicious pursuit, but he did nothing to adjust his course. There was only him, and Duck’s unmoving form, and far too much dirt and rock and distance between them. 

Vaguely, behind him, he also heard the girls’ screaming turning from Duck’s name to his own as they attempted to warn him of a danger he had already dismissed. And he felt the burn and jolt of his knees through his ancient and unwashed jeans as he dropped recklessly to the forest floor and turned his soulmate over in a desperate search for breath. 

And for a second, he thought there was none. 

Blood trickled from his temple, where a nasty bruise was already starting to form. And Indrid reached forward with the sleeve of Duck’s favorite jacket, which he had to this point so reverently kept clean, to wipe the slow stream away before it got into his mouth. 

His mouth, which was parted, and through which faint wisps of air were flowing. 

He was alive. There was still warmth in the world.

And suddenly the sinister cracking of the leaves and brush underfoot as the monster approached them, with the entirely unrushed confidence that only predators have, became once more crystal clear. And Indrid knew - even without the use of foresight - that the chances of either of them making it out of this one alive were very slim indeed. Despite Duck’s surprisingly effective work with that sword of his, there was no touching this thing. It was damn near unstoppable. 

And here, at the end of his life, Indrid decided that for once he would take a risk, and allow the world the opportunity to hurt him. 

So he gathered Duck up tighter in his arms, and kept his back to the monster - not wanting the last thing he saw to be anything but the man he loved. And he whispered quietly into his ear. 

“Duck….” He began, his voice breaking slightly. “I don’t know if… Well you probably can’t hear me right now. But I have to say something. Something I’ve always meant to say, and never have.” A thud came from behind him, as the abomination knocked a fallen tree carelessly to the side in its continued approach. And still Indrid took his time, and forced his voice to stay even. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner, when you could hear me and know how much I mean it. But you deserve to know it, and I deserve to say it this once, even if it’s like this. So here goes…. I love you, Duck Newton. So much. And…. My life hasn’t been easy. I know that’s no excuse for not telling you the truth the second I knew I had it, because you deserve better than that. But I hope you’ll forgive me, wherever we end up next. And wherever that is, or even if we survive this… I said my life was tough, yes. I spent the whole time seeing terrible things and trying to stop them, and knowing deep down I’d never be able to. I don’t know if the universe needed someone to suffer for every random mishap that surrounded them, just to make it all real. Sometimes it feels like I drew the short straw before I was born. But no matter how bad it got, even if all I was ever going to have was those little moments with you... I think I’d pull that straw again. I think I’d always like to be the guy who suffered and still got to know you.” 

And feeling as if everything he’d ever kept locked inside him had been wrung out all at once, Indrid closed his eyes tightly, and held Duck as close as he could, and waited for the inevitable. 

But the inevitable, as it was wont to do, took its time. 

There was ten seconds of nothing. 

And then there was thirty. 

And then almost a minute had passed, and the earth still seemed to be standing all around him. 

And so Indrid opened his eyes. 

And he turned around, slowly. 

And there, on the ground, having the tar thoroughly beat out of it by Dani and Aubrey - with help from a decent amount of water commandeered from the nearby lake - was the abomination. Looking, for the first time, weak. 

Indrid’s shock was mirrored on the faces of the rest of his friends, as they gathered together to regroup and adjust to the fact that - for the first time since the battle had started - they might just have a chance of winning this thing. 

Aubrey continued her assault, throwing harsh jets of water like punches at every angle of the abomination she could reach. Slowly but surely, she and Dani edged their way around the beast - which seemed confused and angry, but was visibly regaining its strength - so that they were between it and Duck. 

Duck. 

Who was now stirring ever so slightly in Indrid’s arms. 

“Well, I don’t know what you did, but it kicked that thing’s ass.” Said Aubrey, her gaze still locked on the intricate but still trademarkably chaotic water work she was doing. “Not that Magic didn’t help, of course. Everyone say ‘thank you Magic’.” 

“Thank you…. Magic.” Indrid responded, not entirely sure to what she was referring, but feeling he owed her that much at the very least. 

“Yeah, thanks Magic.” Dani chimed in. “I thought you two were toast. What did you do? Was that a spell or something? That was crazy.” 

“What did I do?” Indrid asked, thoroughly nonplussed. “I curled up into a ball, basically. I assumed you two took it down.” 

“Oh, of course we did.” Dani said. “We kicked that thing’s ass. But that was after it collapsed like that, that part wasn’t us. Aubrey was doing all of this before, and it was going nowhere until something knocked out that guy’s defenses.” 

“I don’t... “ Indrid adjusted his hold on Duck, and let him rest on the forest floor as he began to wake up, though he kept the man’s hand gripped tightly in his own. “I didn’t do anything. I just told Duck I loved him. Better late than never, and all that. And I, uh… might have cried. It’s a bit of a blur.” 

Aubrey tore her gaze away from the tangle of now-muddy liquid she had created, and gave him a look far more smug than he thought was appropriate for their dire circumstances. Not that she wasn’t right to do it, he had to admit. 

A glance at the abomination told him it had nearly regained its strength - or what was left of it, after Dani had used her knife to add generously to the single slash Duck had put in its back - and Aubrey herself didn’t look like she’d be able to keep it distracted for much longer. Luckily, the rest of the group had made their way nearer to them, and once again they had strength in numbers. 

Ned and Barclay cast a worried glance at Duck, who had begun to open his eyes blearily, and Mama knelt briefly to ascertain that the no-longer bleeding cut he’d sustained wasn’t anything too serious before attempting to rally the troops. 

“Head wounds usually look worse than they are.” She whispered to Indrid, resting a hand reassuringly on his shoulder for a moment. “All right,” she continued, her tone now more commanding as she addressed them all. “So what was that stroke of luck, and how do we make it happen again?” 

Aubrey and Dani shrugged in unison. 

“I thought it was Indrid, but he doesn’t know either.” Aubrey said, and with what looked like a good deal of straining she rallied the last of her strength to create a wave of water that pushed the abomination into the trees and momentarily off its feet, before she collapsed with a huff of exhaustion onto a nearby log. 

Dani, after realizing Aubrey was too out of breath to speak, continued for her. “He just said he told Duck he, uh…. He told Duck something he’d been keeping a secret from him, and that’s-” 

“Holy shit!” Ned’s excited voice cut her off mid-sentence, from the other side of their informal huddle. “I’ve got it! Oh this is good, this is very good. How ironic, actually...” 

Mama rolled her eyes, before turning in his direction. “Something you’d like to share with the class, Mr. Chicane?” 

“Well now that I’ve got it, I’m kind of surprised the rest of you haven’t.” Ned said cheerfully, with no small amount of smugness lacing his tone. “It’s actually almost funny, if y- Ow! What was that for?” 

Barclay flexed his currently ape-like hand dramatically, though he hadn’t actually punched Ned’s arm all that hard. “You realize this thing is going to be back in about thirty seconds, and in the mood to kill. Just tell us, I want it dead so I can go home and drink some wine in the bath and pretend this whole day never happened.” 

“Bigfoot drinks wine?” Duck’s groggy and weak voice came from below the bickering crowd, and they all went quiet. 

“Well hello there, Duck.” Mama said warmly. “Glad you could join us.” 

“Bigfoot takes bubble baths, too.” Ned mumbled under his breath. “Ow! Jesus, that’s going to leave a mark Barclay! You know I bruise like a week-old banana... Glad you’re alive Duck.” 

Duck opened his mouth to say thank you, as was only polite, but Mama cut him off before he had the chance. 

“This has all been a barrel of laughs, I’m sure. But I swear to God, Ned, if you’ve got this thing figured out you’d better tell me now. From the sound of things, our abomination has got its footing again.” 

And sure enough, coming from the forest on all sides of them was the familiar and chilling sound of trees being ripped uselessly apart, as the creature began to circle its prey in preparation to strike once more. 

Indrid gave Duck’s hand, still clasped in his own, a comforting squeeze - knowing as he did how much the unnecessary death of a perfectly good tree bothered him. Duck squeezed back, tentatively. 

“Alright, Mama.” Ned said as bombastically as ever, though his face betrayed a sliver of the nervousness he was feeling now that they were once more in the thick of things. “Get those knickers untwisted. It’s pretty obvious, actually. What does this thing love?” 

“Secrets.” Mama said, her patience clearly wearing about as thin as chiffon. 

“So what would it hate?” 

“What, Ned?” Aubrey demanded.”I refuse to die playing twenty questions. Is it an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral?” 

“Man, you guys are no fun.” Ned replied in a huff. “It’s none of those. It hates when you tell the truth.” 

The group of them looked around at each other, as if trying to assess whether they as a collective were willing to believe the answer could be that easy. 

“Oh come on,” Ned insisted. “Think about it. I’ll drop you a little honesty right now, I was lying when I said I was thinking about pranking Barclay way back when we were trying to bait this thing. I was really thinking about…. Well, something else. But when Barclay told me he was thinking about a prank as well, the thing stumbled just a little bit. You all saw it. It wasn’t a very good truth, cause who gives a shit about that. But telling the truth about a secret he’d been keeping did something….” 

“That’s an interesting thought…” Dani mused. “You know, Duck wasn’t able to get a good stab at that thing until Aubrey admitted that she was the one who lost Mama’s credit card. You might be right for once, Ned.” 

She received simultaneous dirty looks from Aubrey and Ned, before the latter continued with his exposé. “‘For once’ my old hairy ass! I’ve got a clincher on this theory right here. Indrid probably told Duck his biggest secret of all, and that’s what really fucked that thing up. You told him you loved him, right?” 

At this, Barclay shoved Ned so hard he almost fell over - though luckily he didn’t, as he likely wouldn’t have been able to break his fall given how occupied his hands were with dramatically clapping over his mouth the moment he realized what he’d done. 

Everyone looked silently at Duck. 

Duck looked at Indrid. 

Indrid removed his hand from Duck’s, and fidgeted with his glasses, and through scrunched-up eyes looked at nothing at all. 

He was almost grateful for the groaning creak of fresh green wood splitting, now closer than any of the times previous, as it sounded out from the woods just to the right of them. “I uh, yes, it was a big secret I told him.” Indrid provided as vaguely as possible, though he knew he was fooling no one. “I think your little theory might be right, Ned.” 

“Of course I’m right! Always the tone of surprise with you people...” Ned declared dramatically, though his guilt was still written out in the blush that covered his face. 

“Well then,” Mama said, wiping the blade of her knife clean on her coat in preparation for what they all silently felt was their last hope. “Sounds like we’ve got some cupboards to air out. Never thought I’d say this, but I hope you’ve all got some real shady pasts, cause we’re going to need everything we can get right now. Let’s kill this sonuva bitch.” 

 

****** 

Duck was confused. 

He felt he had every right to be, considering… just about everything that had happened in the last twenty minutes. But it didn’t mean he enjoyed the sensation. It had started with the realization, upon waking up, that he hadn’t dreamed any of it at all. He really was a middle aged Forest Ranger with a talking sword, and the mothman was…. Was he holding his hand? And Bigfoot took bubble baths. And it only got worse from there. 

Except for the part about the hand-holding. That was nice. 

With that exception made, however, it wasn’t very long before his helpless brain had lost the thread of the conversation happening above him entirely. The side of his head hurt. Why did the side of his head hurt? He reached up and touched his temple, and was only partially shocked to find that his hand returned to his line of sight with blood smeared across the fingertips. Oh good, that explained it. Or maybe that was bad? Everything was fuzzy right now. 

Ned said something about Indrid being in love with him. That was nice. Wish it were true. Jeeze louiseus, now everyone was staring at him. What was he supposed to say? He’d probably been asked a question, and now he needed someone to bail him out. Indrid was always there for him, maybe he’d do it? 

No such luck. He’d gotten so used to staring into those fucking glasses at this point that he could tell in a second the little jerk wasn’t even looking at him. Had he done something wrong? Didn’t Indrid love him? He vaguely remembered that having come up. Or did he dream that? 

It was then that Duck realized - utilizing all the investigative skills that his time as a Forest Ranger and protector of earth’s many splendors had lent him - that he had a concussion. 

Boy, it’d be nice to lie down right now. Or was he already? Maybe he could lie down even more.

A crash sounded from the forest nearby, and Duck recognized it as the telltale noise of solid wood being felled. Dumb asshole kids, cutting down trees. Don’t even realize that green wood is terrible for campfires. Too smokey. Probably all trying to cover up the fact that they’re here to get high, bunch of lousy punks. Not in his forest. The weed was fine, of course. Duck could chill. But the wildfire hazard...

Another crash came echoing through the woods, this time even closer. And his head began to pound. 

He was vaguely aware of a hand at his back, leading him away from the source of the noise. It was Indrid, he thought. And come to think of it, most of the hometown gang was here too. All this just to narc on some rowdy teenagers? 

It was at this point that his head began to swim, and a shrill and tinny screech began to bounce back and forth between his eardrums. The hand at his back guided him to what felt like a large rock - he’d probably be able to tell if he opened his eyes, however that worked - and moved to cup his face for a moment while its owner said something. Probably something nice, if it was Indrid. Or maybe even funny. Duck wished he could hear, but the damned ringing was drowning everything else out. So instead he waited for the hand to leave, and then put his head between his knees and focused on not throwing up. 

He stayed like that for what was possibly ten minutes, or perhaps just ten seconds. There was really no way of knowing. A watch would know, and he was definitely wearing his, but he couldn’t read it with his eyes closed. Luckily, after a while - possibly even a good long one - his mind began to clear, and his train of thought began taking a more direct route to its station. 

And it was then that he realized his friends were all risking their lives without him. 

His eyes had finally decided to resume their primary function of seeing shit, and the scene that greeted him when they did so was as heroic as it was…. Confusing. The group of them were working in pairs, and were taking turns between stabbing at the abomination Duck had so blissfully and momentarily forgotten, and.... shouting what sounded like private information at it before running off. 

What the everloving fuck.

“I once got fired from Blockbuster for stealing a copy of Fight Club!” Aubrey yelled as Dani stabbed the creature in its midsection, and they both dodged a furious swipe from the beast as they ran to safety behind a large rock, while Barclay and Ned bolted forward from a hiding place of their own. 

“One time I got real drunk and ordered a haunted doll off of ebay!” Ned shouted, just a touch too loud as always, as Barclay football tackled the abomination to the ground and began to beat it mercilessly - aided by a sideline incantation or two from Aubrey. “But I was sober by the time I got it,” he continued, “and it was too scary for me. Real bad juju. It was like half doll, half Candlenights stocking. I was so scared of it I couldn’t even display it, I just stuck it in the basement of the Cryptonomica in a lockbox. And I think I’ve lost the key….” At this point, Barclay had already dodged more than his fill of the creature’s talons, and after taking a few hits of his own had begun to retreat again, dragging a still-rambling Ned in tow. 

As the abomination roared in outrage and charged into the range of another cluster of his friends, Duck spotted Indrid and Mama crouched behind a freshly fallen tree, whispering to each other. So with not that much ado, really - though he did stumble a bit pitifully at the rush that came with standing up - he made his way over to his friends and stood beside them. 

“Duck, honey, you sit your ass back down over there and let us deal with this.” Mama said sternly, his attempt at sneaking quietly having little to no effect at all given that his feet were not entirely under his own control at the moment. 

Indrid whipped around in shock, looking mildly horrified to see Duck had moved from his place of relative safety. “What on earth are you doing?” He demanded, guiding him gently down to a position that was much less conspicuous and much more seated. 

Right, probably shouldn’t be standing upright when stealth and confusion was apparently their entire plan of attack. 

“I’m here to help.” Duck said grumpily, none too happy to have gone through the emotional turmoil of accepting his role as a protector of humanity only to be told to hang out on the sidelines and drink a nice Capri Sun while his friends were in danger. “Now where’s my sword?” 

“I’m around your waist, you bumbling buffoon.” Came the familiar sneer of Beacon, who - sure enough - had been wrapped around him snugly this whole time. 

“Oh good, thanks Beacon.” Duck replied, not quite remembering how their normal interactions went but knowing he should never forget his manners. Before he could make any headway in remembering how to unsheathe the sword from his belt loops, however, Indrid lay a thin hand gently on top of his own. 

“Duck, I don’t think it’s a very good idea for you to strain yourself physically right now.” He said softly but firmly. “I think you might be a tad concussed.” 

“Oh, brilliant. Give the man a medical degree, he’s noticed.” Beacon said sourly, his voice slightly muffled underneath Duck’s grip. 

“Shut up, you dumb fucking sword.” Duck managed, feeling rather proud of his quick wit and razor-sharp humor even in these times of crisis. “Yeah, I might be concussed. What about it? You jealous?” 

Indrid gave him a look that he recognized, though he’d never been able to quite pin it down until now. It was half fond, half exasperated, and it was kind of sweet on him. Duck hoped he’d remember having cracked that particular case after all of this was over and his head was fixed. 

“No, Duck, I’m not jealous.” Indrid said slowly, as if he might have a hard time understanding. Rude. “I just want you to be safe. We all do, we’re your friends. And we won’t let you go swinging a sword around when you’re just as likely to hit yourself as anything else.” 

At this point, several hundred feet away, Aubrey and Dani had rushed once more into the fray, this time as Dani shouted “I tried to ask you out five months ago but you thought I was joking, and I was too embarrassed to correct you!” 

“What on God’s green earth is happening over there, by the way?” Duck asked, his curiosity and propensity for distraction winning over his annoyance by the slightest of margins. 

Mama smiled fondly at the duo in the distance as they fought the monster in seamless unison before running back to safety once more, laughing their heads off. “Ned had a rather interesting realization, thanks to Indrid here. The abomination loves secrets, but it seems to have some sort of aversion to the truth being told. Not enough that it hurts it, but enough that its defenses are shut down. So we’re working in pairs here, trying to keep it too distracted to cotton on to what we’re doing…” She said, though she looked more pensive than confident with their current plan. “I’ll be honest with you boys though, I’m afraid the sorts of secrets we’re working with here just aren’t really cutting it. Either these folks have lived lives that are way more tame than I’d expected of them, or they’re holding out on us…” She sighed, “It’s understandable, I guess. Sometimes a secret gets buried so deep there’s no stakes in the world high enough to make it worth digging back up again. Still, we need something bigger. We’ve scraped that thing up good, but we’re tiring ourselves out as quickly as we’re tiring it. We need a killing blow.” 

“You need a big secret, huh?” Duck asked tentatively, the vague shape of a plan beginning to form itself in the current mist of his mind. “That’ll help you end the fight?” 

Mama looked at him warily. “We sure do. But you don’t have to involve yourself in this, Duck. You might not be thinking straight just now. I’m sure I can dredge up something from my past that could give us a bit more time to work with.” 

“Oh yeah, I’m definitely not thinking straight. Not in any sense of the word, probably. But I want to help.” Duck said firmly. “I can do it.” 

“Hold on,” Indrid interjected, looking a bit frantic all of a sudden, “we can’t have you running out there in the middle of this. You’ll get hurt. Tell him he has to stay back, Mama, this is ridiculous.” 

“I can’t tell Duck much of anything, you know that as well as anyone Indrid.” Mama said, a touch of fondness now coloring her voice. “Besides, I don’t think this is the kind of secret he’s going to have to shout. I think it’ll be enough if he just says it to you. Why don’t you both stay back, I’ll rally the troops and give you the signal when it’s time… And Duck? There’s some things about this situation that won’t make any sense to you right now, but I get the feeling we’ll be laughing over parts of it sooner than later. Don’t worry about what I mean by that just now, actually. I just want to say that…” She cleared her throat. “You’re a brave one Duck Newton.” 

And without another word she slunk off at a crouch, making good time through the perimeter of the crude circle they’d formed around the monster. Indrid, meanwhile, slid himself from a squat into a sitting position, the jacket he still wore on his back catching against the rough bark of the tree. Duck knelt next to him, watching Mama as she progressed from cluster to cluster of their friends, filling them all in on the plan ahead of them. And then he remembered he should’ve said thank you to her for the nice compliment.

“Shit.” He spat out, annoyed at himself. 

“What?” Indrid asked.

“Oh, nothing…”

“So, uh, what are you going to say?” Indrid, for whatever reason, looked anxious and miserable. 

“I can’t tell you that, pal.” Duck said. “It’ll ruin the whole thing. And don’t look into the future, I don’t know if that counts but we’d better play it safe.” 

Indrid nodded minutely, his face now very intentionally blank. 

“.... I don’t know how you can not know, though.” Duck said, more quietly this time. “You’ve got to. I hope that’s not what’s making you look so bleak, cause you don’t have to… I don’t know. It doesn’t have to matter to you. I thought you might have said something earlier that… Well, anyway, I probably dreamt it up when I hit my head. But the point right now is the secret itself. I just have to say it, and then we can kill this thing and go home, and we never have to see each other again if you don’t want.” 

Indrid nodded again, although despite Duck’s reassurances he now looked worse than ever. “Yes, I can… I can take a hint. This will all be over soon.” 

Mama made her way to the last group - Aubrey and Dani - and after a moment of discussion and a fair amount of what looked like giggling from the two of them (and a chuckle or two out of Mama, Duck was offended to notice), everyone was crouched and ready to attack. 

The abomination, for its part, was standing silently in what was almost the dead center of them all like the spoke of a wheel, its chest heaving angrily as it stretched its talonous fingers in a way so unearthly it almost destroyed its weakly tethered association to the vague idea of being humanoid at all. For all the damage they’d done, and all the blows it had taken, it hardly looked close to death yet, and it threw its head angrily this way and that - antlers rustling chaotically - as if looking for its next challenger.

And then Mama raised two fingers in the air, gesturing them forward as everyone charged. 

Duck debated his position a bit frantically then. As close as he’d come to saying all of this outright all those times before, this was going to be his only chance. And even though he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to end well, he wanted to do it right anyway. He wanted to look Indrid in the eyes - or the glasses, at least. 

On the other hand, if he didn’t keep his friends in his line of sight while they charged the monster that had already wreaked such horrifying destruction on people and places he loved, he might just go crazy. 

So he settled for grabbing Indrid by his reluctant shoulders, and turning the man toward him. He’d just have to keep tabs on his periphery. 

“Ok, um. So, Indrid….” He began, his heart racing despite the fact that he knew - even with his brain as fuzzy as it still was - that he was hardly the person risking their ass the most at the moment. “So it’s like this, I guess. I spent.... dammit, this is hard. I spent a lot of my life trying to avoid being exactly where I am now. I know a lot of kids would’ve killed to meet a badass lady with a cool sword who told them their future was just going to be one adventure after another. But you know me…” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the abomination start to stumble, just slightly, as his friends began their attacks. It was already working. He had to press on. “Yeah, um, you know me. I like, y’know, eating the same breakfast every day. I like having one coat that doesn’t really match anything in my closet and wearing it all winter anyway.” He saw the bright flash of a flame come from Aubrey’s hands. Fucking fire safety hazard... “I like patrolling out in the forest and being left alone as often as possible. I’m a pretty simple guy, and I’m like that on purpose. But even so, I think that blow back there must have knocked something loose in my brain, cause I’m realizing right now that, uh... This fucking thing could kill all of us in the next five minutes. And even if we don’t all beef it, that just means I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life being some kind of poorly-chosen hero, even though I don’t want to. But the thing about all of that is…” He saw Barclay take a rough hit from one of the creature’s claws, and Ned charge in with a fury to save him. He couldn’t help there, all he could do was keep going. “The thing about that is, all of a sudden I don’t even mind. Because if having my fate all picked out for me was a package deal, I could probably fight one of these fucking things every day and still feel like things came out even, cause it meant I got to meet you. And I know you don’t love me back, and that’s ok. Because... I mean, I just ruined it by saying it too early, but I love you Indrid. I’m the guy who has to fight these fucking things, and I’m the guy who got to love you, and if anything right now I feel lucky for that.” At this point he had begun to rush, somehow worried that each breath would be his last chance to get all of this out, and simultaneously feeling his lungs were really letting him down in their one job of filling up properly. “So I guess what I needed to say is... don’t feel like you owe me anything here - it’s ok, I’ve made my peace with all of this. But I love you, I really do. And I’m sure you know that - we’re soulmates for Christ’s sake. It’s barely even a secret to everyone else, but I think between you and me it still kind of was. And even a little bit between me and myself if I’m honest with you. It was a real powerful one. So for more than just the tactical advantage, I’ve gotta admit, I just… I had to say it to you at least once.” 

At some point, between his distraction with the ongoing battle to their left and despite his best intentions, Duck had ended up declaring all of this more to the branch of a pine tree that was swaying rather distractingly in the wind over Indrid’s shoulder than to Indrid himself. But now, having gotten through all of that, he felt he ought to at least have the decency to see how the man was reacting to it all. 

And as Duck slowly forced his eyes over to Indrid’s face, he saw that - surprisingly enough - the look of poorly-repressed anguish that had been on it the last time he’d checked had vanished. Instead, he wore the same one Duck had managed to taxonomize only minutes before. 

Fondness and exasperation. 

And there was a bit of love in there as well. 

Had it always been there? Duck was dumbstruck at this turn of events, and at the fact that - even through all of his anxiety and self doubt, and despite the fact that reading the minutiae of facial expressions had never been one of his strong suits - it was written so plainly on Indrid’s face he was sure he couldn’t mistake it. Something between the curve of his lips when he smiled now - just like any other smile, only with the sense that he couldn’t even stop it if he wanted to. And something about the way his eyebrows raised above his glasses - as if he was surprised, but not in a way that was really bad at all. And something about the tilt of his head - like even now, in the midst of a battle scene after a long fight for their lives, he was relaxed. All of it came together in just the right way that made Duck feel the tiniest bit stupid for never having seen all the love he’d been getting back from Indrid before. Just because it had been communicated differently - and just because they’d both been afraid to say it out loud - didn’t actually mean they’d never said it at all.

“So you could hear me, then?” Indrid asked. 

“Wait, huh? When?” Duck demanded, suddenly confused by the unexpected sharp turn the conversation was taking. 

“Before, when I told you I loved you. Back when I said it first.” Indrid said, a little smugly. And Duck - despite the roiling mixture of feelings that had begun to surface from some place low in his stomach - recognized already that this was absolutely going to become a thing between them. “You were out cold, right after you hit your head, so I figured you couldn’t hear me but I had to say it anyway. Your declaration was a bit longer, but it borrowed from mine thematically, I think.” 

Duck sat there for a moment, dumbstruck. “You really… you said it to me too? When I wasn’t even awake to hear it?” 

“Yes, I did.” 

“You…. You jackass. You couldn’t wait a second for me to wake back up and actually hear it for myself?” Duck huffed, whacking the back of his hand lightly against his soulmate’s shoulder. “Boy fucking howdy…. We really are a couple of idiots in love, huh?” 

“I’d like to contest my being a jackass” Indrid responded gleefully, still smiling that impossibly wide smile that so many foolish people before had misinterpreted as unnerving. “But you’re certainly right about the second part. I think I always have been, even before I met you. And I know I always will be.”

“You had a vision?”

“No, just faith.”

And for what was perhaps the first instance in all the time they’d known each other, there was nothing left to say between them. 

As much as Indrid would have liked to have made it half as tender as Duck deserved, or half as sweet and slow as he’d never let himself imagine, he really couldn’t wait any longer. He’d spent almost his whole lifetime trying not to wonder how it would feel to kiss his soulmate - and the decades after he’d realized that his soulmate had actually been born and was walking this earth with him only doing his best to double down on that notion. And now he grabbed Duck by the collar of his ruined forest ranger shirt, and pulled the man into a kiss as passionate as he was willing to risk given the man’s head injury. 

It was nothing he had tried never to expect, in every way he would’ve hoped. Unlike what was technically their first kiss, only a short distance away at the top of Sundial Peak, this one was not a question but an answer. And with all the fear and uncertainty and nervousness that had cast a shadow over their previous one now swept entirely aside as if it had never been there at all, Indrid figured this was kissing as kissing should be. Duck’s stubbly beard was surprisingly soft against his own smooth cheeks, and when he reached up to cradle the man’s face with one of his hands he found that his jaw was surprisingly firm. 

And Duck, after allowing for a moment of shock - and adjusting for his concussively delayed reaction time - hardly disappointed. He reached one of his solid arms around Indrid’s significantly more slender shoulders, and with the other he tangled his fingers into the man’s silky white hair. 

And Indrid felt so impossibly warm, from the inside out, that he almost didn’t know how he was containing it. 

Even with Indrid’s sunglasses mashed uncomfortably between them, and with Duck’s ranger hat falling off rather embarrassingly in the middle of it all, they both privately doubted whether there had ever been a better kiss in all of recorded history. 

Idiots in love, indeed.

And then to their left, rather suddenly, came a crashing thud, as the abomination was felled for good by a clever twist of Dani’s knife. And by the time the two of them managed to part from each other and look over, it had already begun to dissolve into the unknown shards of light that had accompanied the downfall of every monster that had preceded it. 

In the near distance their friends cheered and whooped with triumphant glee in an octave only available those those who have just escaped a situation they were certain would be their last. And the hollering only doubled in volume and rowdiness when their collective eyes turned to the pair of men, still half crouching behind the log, looking as disheveled as if they never actually did anything but kiss.

So Indrid and Duck, still grasping each other even after they had moved apart to take in the victory, looked back at each other, and ignored their friends’ good natured ribbing entirely, and smiled in the way you only can when everything in the world has - just for a second, as rare as it was - gone entirely right.

And then Duck fainted. 

He was still concussed, after all. 

 

******** 

Six weeks later, Duck’s coffee cup was empty. 

It wasn’t the end of the world really. He’d done his fair share of averting that, actually, so he knew the feeling far better than he’d like. But he wasn’t altogether happy about it either. 

The Nostalgia Diner was bustling once more, now reopened and doing its best to get its groove back even after the tragic loss of the waitress that had once been its backbone. Sharon had been a favorite among locals and the regular long-haul trucking crowd, and while finding a perfect replacement was a bit much to ask, Duck also felt that at a bare minimum this new girl ought to know how to fill a coffee cup. 

He raised his mug in a silent salute as she passed - the universal signal for “ more please, and quick” - but she didn’t even seem to notice. 

Ah, well, she was young. She’d get the hang of it. 

A cold gust of air accompanied the sound of a cheerfully ringing bell, and Duck watched with a small smile on his face as Indrid entered the cafe - his sunglasses fogging up almost immediately at the extreme change in temperature from the now steadily chilling outdoors into the always cozy diner. He shed a few layers, hanging them up on the communal coat stand, and waved to Pigeon and her girlfriend and a couple of the other regulars as he went to join Duck at what was now no longer ‘his’, but rather ‘their’, table. 

“G’morning, Duck.” he said with a smile of his own, stooping to kiss his boyfriend’s cheek with lips that were still cold from the outdoors - not that either minded in the least. 

“Mmm.” Duck replied. 

“Oh, excuse me, miss.” Indrid flagged down their anxiously bustling waitress as he pulled his chair out and made to sit. “My boyfriend here needs more coffee, and I believe there might be a carton of eggnog in the back with my name on it. I mean that quite literally, it’ll say ‘Indrid’ on it, they save it for me.” 

The waitress looked - as all new employees tended to - confused and slightly frightened at being given any sort of task at all, but she scurried off to the coffee pot and refreshed Duck’s cup quickly enough, and in the end that was all that mattered. 

“Thanks.” Duck said to him in a quiet voice, tapping his foot lightly against Indrid’s own. 

“Of course.” Indrid replied lovingly, moving his sunglasses to perch them safely on his forehead - where they could defog without giving any of the older patrons of the diner an unwanted heart attack. “It’s not quite nine o’clock yet, though. To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“It’s called having a good fucking morning, and you’re about to ruin it.” responded Duck, doing his best to look unimpressed but not entirely succeeding. 

Their waitress returned, this time with both food and eggnog, and Duck had an odd moment - as he so often did lately - where he realized there was little more he wanted from life than what he had right in front of him. It was an almost frightening concept, at times, given how easy it was to lose. But he would truly be hard-pressed to come up with a world better than the one where he just got to eat a nice warm breakfast with the love of his life while they sat and talked about nothing at all. 

“Well, I think she’s got some room to go, Duck, but our new waitress might just have what it takes.... Why are you smiling?” Indrid asked, his eyes narrowing. “Do I have something on my face, or are you actually having that a good a morning? What’s happened? I need to know how to recreate it.” 

“Oh nothing, you know.” Said Duck. “Just a regular mundane day that I get to spend with someone I love. I don’t mean that in a cheesy way. Or maybe I do, but it’s not cheesy when it’s me saying it. Just a statement of fact.” 

“Of course, of course.” Indrid agreed. “And I don’t mean it in a cheesy way either, when I say I love you too, Duck.” 

Duck blushed. “You know, I, uh… aw hell. This is kind of silly of me to say, but uh…” He trailed off, trying to decide exactly where he was going with this. “I’ve had a lot of names in my life, and I thought I’d pretty much settled on Duck. I never thought I’d find one I liked more than that. But hearing you say it is something else entirely, you know?”

Indrid set down his fork - which he’d been using to arrange what he considered a perfect bite of pancake, egg, and hashbrown (a level of food mingling which Duck, incidentally, found treasonous) - and laid his hand over the one Duck was resting idly by his mug. The tips of his delicate fingers traced the light tan line where Duck’s watch, now on his other wrist, had once been worn. 

“I know.” The gesture said. 

“Do you think we’ll be that old couple that still comes to the same place every morning, and insists on holding hands every time they cross the street?” Indrid asked instead, opening a newspaper with a certain level of obvious disinterest as to its contents. 

“I think we already are.” Duck replied, before shoving a large portion of french toast (and only french toast) into his mouth. 

“Hmm…” Indrid hummed, and he accepted the pen Duck pulled from his shirt pocket with a smile of thanks, as he handed over the crossword page without even being asked. 

“Jane already loves you, by the way.” Duck said, after a few moments of silence and a good amount of chewing. “Ever since you two talked on the phone she’s been obsessed with getting to meet you. I thought we wouldn’t get her until Candlenights considering her busy schedule, but with you to sweeten the pot she might come for Thanksgiving. 

“I think that has very little to do with our five minute conversation about embarrassing stories from your childhood, and a great deal to do with how much you’ve been talking me up when I’m not around to correct you.” Indrid responded with a wry smile that was almost hidden as he folded the paper in half and began to scribble notes in the margins. “Do you think we could do an Amnesty Thanksgiving? Or would that be a bit much for her...” 

“Hmm. We might be able to swing that.” Duck mused. “It’d take some very weird conversations though. She already knows I’m trained with a sword, but I think she just assumes I watch anime or something.” 

“What’s anime?” Indrid asked, his head popping up in curiosity. 

“God, I love you.” Duck replied. 

They sat in silence for a good while longer, Duck solving his crossword puzzle and Indrid idly writing the outcomes to various major league baseball games and court cases that weren’t scheduled to happen for another week. And as Duck’s knee brushed unconsciously against his own under the table, Indrid couldn’t help but wonder at how Duck’s sentimental mood was truly well deserved. 

He’d always thought allowing love into his life would be the death of him. But this, somewhere in the space between he and Duck, where the jam and the slowly softening butter lay, was the edge of the world. The place where love began. And he wondered at that too, and at the feeling that somehow - even here at the beginning of it all - he knew it was a thing that would never end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't monologue here, but it really is hard to wrap my head around the fact that I sat down at 1 o'clock at night five months ago and decided on a whim to write a fanfiction, and here I am now having accidentally written a paperback-length novel. I know that's a common joke around here, but I'm not actually a writer so I didn't realize what I was getting myself into. Anyway, thank you all so much for all the very kind comments you've left along the way. I'm glad this has meant something to some of you, I really never expected much out of it at all.


End file.
